Sir Bingham's Wisdom

It's time to panic!

2009-04-27T13:34:00.000-07:00

Disaster! The recession has finally hit home in Britain and the nation is united in its sympathy for the greatest victims of them all – the billionaires. The Sunday Times have revealed that those poor people have lost £155 billion between them, so you can see why they are so annoyed at having to pay higher income tax. I'm told that one, Peter Hargraves, who made his money and, no doubt, his own personal contribution to the bankrupting of the British economy, as a fund manager in the City during the boom, has threatened to go and live in the Isle of Man to avoid his new tax bill. Protesters are reported to be rioting on the streets of Douglass as I write. There is no truth in the rumour that a disabled former soldier has been running the London Marathon to raise the money to buy him his ticket.

On a lighter note, the Budget! I have discovered why Alistair Darlings growth projections and GDP forecasts were so far off what everyone else said. It seems that he has been using the wrong type of tea – when one is trying to predict the future, one should use darjeeling and not tetley.

The Budget Explained

2009-04-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

That nice young chap Alistair Darling has delivered his Budget, managing to do so while keeping a straight face which was quite impressive. Well, drawing on my own extensive experience of such announcements, I offer my translation of what he had to say....

“We will introduce a new 50% top rate of tax for people who earn £150,000 a year”......this is a clever move to get gullible journalists to write headlines like this, this and this which say that only the rich will pay for the ghastly amount of borrowing that we're announcing. No one will notice that it will only raise a teensy fraction of the money needed and that the poor will pay all the rest...at least not until after the election. I personally am not worried about this, incidentally. Anyone who is stupid enough not to take their money in stocks so that they don't have to pay any income tax at all doesn't deserve 150 grand a year!

“All under 25s who have been out of work for a year will be offered a job or training”.....We'll bung them on a course where they'll get a worthless NVQ. Hopefully this will be so unattractive that they'll claim disability and that'll get them off the jobless statistics.

“You can't cut your way out of a recession!”....We're going to try to scare everyone into thinking that the Tories will close their local hospital to save money. We'll cut spending to ribbons but only after the election.

“Alcohol duty will rise by 2%”....Drunks won't notice

“Duty on tobacco will rise by 2%”....Smokers won't be able to help themselves.

“Fuel Duty will rise by 2%”.....if you say it quickly no-one will notice that this will actually raise as is supposed to be raised by that new tax on the rich.

“The annual ISA limit will increase from £7,200 to £10,200”.....no-one has that much money in the bank anymore anyway

“The economy will grow at 1.5% in 2010 and over 3% per year after that”.....It won't

“The Budget deficit will be £175billion this year”.....You're f***ed, we're f***ed, everyone is f***ing f***ed.

I also notice that the Treasury have had a great new idea for how to keep bankers off the dole queue. They will now be modestly remunerated for selling all the extra government debt which is necessary to bale out those selfsame bankers. And so the circle of life is complete.

Gordon Saves the Day...Again!

2009-04-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

It has been a reassuring week. The G20 summit didn't actually achieve anything, of course, but it's nice to know that a big show with enormously rich and important people slapping each other on the back and annoying the Queen is still enough to distract everyone from the important matters of the day! The Security operation surrounding the Summit cost £7million – about enough to pay Jackie Smith's expenses for almost three months – and amounts to a valuable fiscal stimulus for the red carpet industry.

The circus then decamped to Strasbourg for the NATO summit, which welcomed the military giants of Albania to the alliance and at which Barak Obama demonstrated the American's new secret weapon which is based on the Vulcan death-grip – you can see the demonstration in the picture above. The Albanians were, I hear, very impressed.

And there was exciting news from the European Space programme in its continuing efforts to catch up with the North Koreans. They will be attempting to find new planets using the European Extremely Large Telescope – I hear that they were up all night trying to think of a name. The telescope will feature a mirror the size of five buses. British scientists are, as always, keen to participate, and have offered to provide the buses so that the others can measure the device!

The President Arrives

2009-03-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

People often ask me what Government ministers do when they are not legislating, opening new rubbish dumps and watching pay-per-view pornography. Actually, I think the great scandal of the week – Jacqui Smith's husband's theft of the princely sum of £10.00 of public money for the purposes of entertaining himself while the missus was away – has been a little unfair. My nephew, Harry, who works for the Labour Party as an adviser, explained to me that it had simply been an oversight – Jacqui accidentally claimed for the TV bit of her bill instead of just the internet bit. Harry says that if Richard Timney, or Dick as Jacqui calls him, had got his porn online like everyone else then there wouldn't have been a problem!

As to what Ministers do when they are not doing any of the above, they attend international conferences. This provides numerous opportunities for meeting new people, drinking expensive wine and pretending to be important. This last is more easily achieved if you can convince crowds of protesters to turn up and wave banners at you. One of these events is due to happen this week in London, and Barak Obama will be coming to tell every one else what to do about the financial crisis. We will let him do this because he is not George W Bush. He will fly into Stanstead on the Presidential Aeroplane Air Force One, then on to London in the Presidential Helicopter Marine One, where he will have his lunch of the Presidential Dinner Plate Catering Corps One. Amongst his entourage will be a dedicated medical team and a supply of Presidential blood, in case he should be a victim of an assassination attempt. In the interests of saving money in these straightened times, any innocent bystanders injured in any such incident will be allowed to bleed to death. This is all in stark contrast to Gordon Brown, who has been travelling on his 'pre-G20 world tour' with nothing more than a crack team of eighty three PR men charged with trying to think up stories to distract everyone from his total lack of impact on anybody. He has been doing everything else himself and in he event that anyone thinks he is important enough to try to assassinate he will perform his own life-saving surgery with his home-made needle and thread. I shouldn't think he has too much to worry about, though, as all of the world's nutcases are too busy trying to find Fred Goodwin so they can bring about the end of capitalism and the emancipation of the world's oppressed by smashing his car window.

Incidentally, I understand that there is no truth in the rumour that Obama was initially reluctant to attend the conference and was finally persuaded only when offered the opportunity of a private meeting with Jonathan Ross to discuss ways of offending vulnerable people while broadcasting to the nation.

Following in the footsteps of Lionheart!

2009-03-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a visit to Beaumont Palace in Oxford, which is the birthplace of King Richard I, Coeur de Lion. Richard, you will remember, became embroiled in someone else's war in the Middle East and then bankrupted the country, two old English traditions which our current government proudly upholds to this day!

My American friends have been telling me about how their country has once again been following in the footsteps of the Motherland, which always gives me a warm feeling inside. They have enjoyed watching the public outrage about the massive bonuses that Britain's useless bankers have been awarding themselves and have decided to have a pogrom of their own. America's public enemy number one is AIG and the celebrity chat-show guest, 'Special' ten-pin bowler and occasional President Barak Obama has said that he will use 'all legal means' to get the bonuses paid back. To which all of America replies, 'All legal means?? Why stop there? Where's Dick Cheney when you need him? Cart the bastards off to Morocco for a bit of waterboarding and they'll soon pay it back!' My own advice to Barak would be to study the history books and take comfort from the true lesson of King Richard I. It doesn't matter if you spend your life in an endless round of futile battles, or if you wreck the country's finances and cripple its people with ruinous taxes, because in a few centuries you'll just be a minor character played half-heartedly by Sean Connery in a bad Kevin Costner movie with an awful theme song.

Gambling

2009-03-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of attending the Carling Cup final at Wembley Stadium last week. Not to watch the football, naturally, but to show my support for the corporate entertainment industry at this difficult time. I did notice that one of the teams, Tottenham Hotspur, is sponsored by Mansion, which is a gambling company. The other team, Manchester Untied is sponsored by AIG, another gambling company and one which is now proudly owned by the American Taxpayer.
Gordon Brown himself made a trip to America to visit his ‘good friend’ Barak Obama and congratulate him on his new acquisition. I thought that Gordon’s speech to Congress went well for him as he had received nineteen standing ovations, and I said so to my nephew Harry, who works for the Labour Party. Harry was less impressed and explained that they had only applauded when Gordon said something nice about America. He says the same thing happens when a rock and roll band plays a concert and says that “insert name here is the best venue we’ve ever played!” This ruse is apparently enough to guarantee a big cheer. So well done to Gordon for being in touch enough to steal a trick from the popular music business!
The meeting with the President didn’t go quite as well with the President finding it difficult to remember who the rime Minister was, or why he was there. Downing Street have denied the rumour that Obama mixed Gordon up with the leader of the Scout Troop who he met on the same day. I must say I am a bit disappointed in the President – I mean, deep down we always knew that he knew and cared about the rest of the world little more than poor old George W. Bush but we thought that at least he would be able to fake an interest. We like phoney sincerity in Britain – that’s why we kept electing Tony Blair.

I was pleased to hear Gordon use the phrase, “Let us build tomorrow, today!” To let you into a little secret , I suggested the phrase to one of my friends in the Labour Party when he approached me for some ideas. Actually, I stole it from an old exhibition I went to on a visit to America back in the fifties. Back then they thought that the world of tomorrow would involve moon bases and Jetson style flying cars rather than a new Depression but there you go.

It wasn’t a very interesting trip, although I do remember visiting a lake called Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg in New England. Apparently, Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, in the language of the Nipmuck People, means Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.

Business as Usual

2009-02-28T13:13:00.000-08:00

It has been a reassuring week. I had been getting a bit worried about all that 'change' stuff in America, so I am relieved to see that when Barak Obama said 'troops out of Iraq in 16 months' he really meant 'troops not really out of Iraq in 19 months, just like John McCain would have done'. Politics is alive and well in the Land of the Free!

There was also good news from Ireland, where robbers managed to find a bank which still had some money which they proceeded to steal. The British government is rushing to organise a fact-finding mission to see what lessons can be learned on behalf of Britain's criminal fraternity who are on their knees after the drugs and prostitution market collapsed along with the banking industry. Not that the bankers are being paid any less, of course. It is just that the few who are still bankers are having to stay in to avoid the angry mobs and the many more who are now employed as government ministers have to worry about the tabloids finding out. Which makes all the fuss about Fred Goodwin's pension all the more unfair. I'd have thought that Gordon Brown would have thought £16 million was a small price to pay to get Fred out of RBS before he did any more damage to the economy – he was, by the estimation of a friend of mine who works for the treasury, costing the country around £3,000 per second, after all. Unfortunately for Fred he has committed the cardinal sin of the New Labour era – he has generated a bad headline for the government.

Amusingly, Tony Blair has set up a consultancy which will allow him to advise those governments who are willing to pay him lots of money as to how they should run their country. I am thinking of going into the market myself. For a mere £3000.00 per day, I will show you how to raise funds for your political party by selling government policy, honours, seats in the House of Lords and so on, how to use spurious evidence to drag your country into pointless wars and how to run your country's economy into the ground then get out before the shit hits the fan.

Drunk in Charge

2009-02-22T07:10:00.000-08:00

There was more bad news for Gordon Brown today – Scotland has been named as having the world's eighth highest alcohol consumption. I'm told that Gordon is determined to act and intends to appoint an Alcohol Tsar to address the problem. He believes that with a little bit of hard work and focus will soon restore Scotland to number one! Now all he needs is to find someone in the Labour Party who is capable of organising a piss-up in a brewery.

Earlier in the week I had been appalled to learn of the alleged fraud perpetrated by Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of running one of those massive pyramid schemes, or Ponzi schemes as we are now obliged to call them as the media have decided that the American term is sexier than the old fashioned British one. Interestingly, the same thing happens with the code names given to military operations. The British version of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the obscure Operation Telic and when the Americans launched Operation Desert Storm, the British part of the liberation of Kuwait was called Operation Granby. I once asked an old military friend of mine who expained that this is because our army has been around for much longer than the American one so has used up all the good code names. The tradition was started by King Harold who named his defence of Hastings, rather unfortunately, 'Operation Keep Your Eyes Open'. The Battle didn't actually take place at Hastings, incidentally, but at the nearby town of Battle. Now what are the chances of that happening?

Anyway back to the point, which is, if memory serves, Sir Allen Stanford. On the day the news broke, I was lunching with an old friend, Anthony, and I expressed my indiganation that this chap had sullied the Knighthood with his actions. Anthony tried to reassure me by explaining that Stanford doesn't have a proper Knighthood but rather one that he got from the government of Antigua and Barbuda in return for bankrolling most of the country. This did not make me any happier. I had to give the bloody Labour Party a fortune for my Knighthood – if I'd known I could have got a cheap one in the Caribbean I could have saved myself thousands, and worked on my tan at the same time! Stanford has not, of course, been convicted of anything illegal in America. We agreed, however, that he has already been found guilty of the worst of all crimes – trying to make cricket entertaining. One doesn't go to the cricket to have fun! No, one goes to spend the morning reading the paper, the afternoon slowly getting drunk and the evening sleeping it off. One doesn't want to be interrupted by the game!

Earlier in the week, I noticed that Gordon Brown paid a visit to the Pope, and he will soon be going to visit Barak Obama to pass on the Papal advice. I have it on good authority that Gordon has been telling everyone that His Holiness spoke about Jesus casting the money-changers from the Temple, and how they were then gainfully employed by Pontius Pilate regulating the Judean financial system as it recovered from the mid-1st century economic downturn.

Britain : Leading the World in Wild Oat Sowing!

2009-02-15T04:20:00.000-08:00

The country has been scandalized by the story of a 13 year old boy who has fathered a child with his 15 year old girlfriend. When a reporter asked the young chap how he would manage financially he replied, “What's financially?” Gordon Brown has already sounded him out about taking over the Treasury once Alistair Darling finally gets the sack. The Children's Secretary, a man called Ed Balls (yes that is his real name – I double checked) expressed his concern by publicly vilifying the young couple and the local Social Services Department revealed that they would be providing intensive support – beginning by allowing the story to be plastered all over the papers. They will also be taking responsibility for putting the new father through intensive training for his new career appearing on daytime talk shows.

This is a welcome new departure for the Government's job creation policy. After all, the wheels are starting to come off the plan for getting unemployable former bankers off the dole queue by giving them jobs in government. Sir James Crosby has had to leave his job at the FSA, on the grounds that running the Halifax into the ground didn't really qualify him for a job which involves stopping people from running their banks into the ground. If that wasn't bad enough Glen Moreno, who was overseeing the government's massive new shareholding in the nation's banks had to resign after it turned out that he'd spent most of his professional life helping rich people to dodge tax, Tom Daschele style. I am astonished that this took anyone by surprise – he was a banker, after all, so helping rich people to get richer was his job.

Meanwhile, the government's drugs adviser has said that ecstasy is less dangerous than riding a horse. This is true. My daughter Sally once rode a horse into a rave and banged her head!

A Message from Above

2009-02-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

The Pope has got into trouble for de-excommunicating or re-communicating or whatever the right verb is, an English Bishop who is also a Holocaust denier and all round loon. The chap in question is called Richard Williamson and, until this week, was virtually unknown in the UK, this being a country which now gets its religious instruction from the sides of London Buses. For this reason we were always spared from having to share in Tony Blair's religious 'journey' while he was Prime Minister. Now that he no longer has any ambition to do anything other than make money and be seen with famous people, he has been speaking at something called a 'prayer breakfast'. He even invited his good friend Barak Obama, presumably to tell him why invading Iraq was a good idea after all.

The BBC has been having further presenter-related problems. Carol Thatcher, who had somehow got herself a job on a current affairs programme got herself sacked after she called an unidentified tennis player a 'golly-wog' and Jeremy Clarkson called the Prime Minister a 'one-eyed Scottish idiot'. He was forced to apologise after massive protests from the Royal Institute for the Idiotic whose members were deeply offended by the comparison to Gordon Brown.

And, just to prove that some things never change, the England cricket team have been hammered by West Indies. The England and Wales Cricket Board, who are responsible for these things, have set a new precedent for decisive action by sacking the coach before the series even began. Good for them!

Lordy Lordy!

2009-01-31T10:30:00.000-08:00

We have had an amusing new political scandal this week when several 'Lords' were recorded offering to change legislation for a fee. The criticism struck me as unfair. Now that the last three factories in Britain have closed and nobody wants our 'financial services,' as we still laughingly call our unrivalled expertise in crap money-making schemes, laws are the only thing we've got left to sell!

Meanwhile, the man who did such a good job of reforming our House of 'Lords' and who is now bringing that same expertise to bear on the Middle East peace process with equally impressive results has made a welcome return to the public eye. Yes, Tony Blair is back and he has been explaining how he is just like Barak Obama. The whole of America is praying that he is a wrong about this as he was about everything else. Tony has also been talking about his 'governance projects' in Sierra Leone and Rwanda which, presumably, seek to show the people of those countries why appointing corrupt legislators who will sell policy to the highest bidder is better than relying on boring old democracy to get things done.

The Blame Game

2009-01-24T07:04:00.000-08:00

The Government has been coming down hard on the Bankers this week. Gordon Brown has said how angry he is at poor old Freddie Goodwin who has carried the can for the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland, and 'Lord' Paul Myners, who is minister for the City has been slagging off 'grossly over-rewarded bankers' for mismanaging their banks. Former grossly over-rewarded banker Paul, I am told, came to this view in consultation with his ministerial colleagues, former grossly over-rewarded banker Mervyn Davies and former grossly over-rewarded banker Baroness Vadera, so I think we can trust him. It all comes as the statistics say that we have officially sunk into recession and the pound is approaching parity with the Hungarian Forint on the international currency markets.

But we should not be downhearted, for our great nation still has much to be proud of. We lead the way in developing the New Economy, where the danger of rich bankers taking silly risks in search of massive bonuses is safely negated because the taxpayer covers all the money they lose, and where the terrible spectre of massed ranks of unemployed bankers queuing at the soup kitchen will concern us no more as they will all be employed as Government Ministers. My spies in Downing Street tell me that he has already been on the phone to Barak Obama to tell the new President all about his new model. Let's hope the new President follows the wise old Scotsman's advice, eh?

And that's not all. We have a rapidly growing burglary sector, our Jobcentres and benefit offices can hardly keep up with demand and we lead the world in natural breasts, thanks to the efforts of Kate Winslett and her magnificent hits, Revolutionary Road and The Reader. My wife is a big fan of Kate's. She has followed that fine actress' career ever since she appeared in Sense and Sensibility. Lady Collar has always loved nineteenth century novels. I remember the days after we were married; she liked nothing better than to be tucked up in bed holding a little Hardy and she tells me that before we met she liked nothing better than getting stuck into Nicholas Nickleby or the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Planes, Trains and so on

2009-01-17T05:43:00.000-08:00

There has been a bit of fuss about the Government's approval of the expansion of Heathrow Airport in the face of mass protests by concerned citizens. Polls suggest that almost eighty percent of British celebrities who live near London are opposed to the measure. The minister responsible for pushing through the plan is Geoff Hoon, who did such a good job of improving the transport network of Iraq back in 2003 when he was Secretary of State for Defence. In a startling change of policy for the Labour Party, Geoff has attacked the celebrities and suggested that as they probably fly quite a lot they might be being a bit disingenuous. Emma Thompson responded by saying “This is not a campaign against flying - we're trying to stop the expansion of Heathrow in the face of climate change.” (Translation, “i'll still be able to fly, silly, just not all of those nasty poor people with their flights to Ibiza and their air rage. There wasn't any climate change when it was only the rich who could fly, after all.”) I found the exchange most illuminating and I must say that, looking demure but sexy in a green Chanel tweeded muslin suit, Geoff cut a fine figure – surely he is one of the finest Transport Secretaries we have ever had!

The problem of lack of capacity at our airports is one that taxes the finest minds in Britain. I suggested to an old friend of mine who currently has a reasonably well remunerated consultancy with the Civil Aviation Authority that we look at the latest idea from America, which involves landing in the middle of rivers. Apparently I had misunderstood a news story and the plane that landed in the Hudson River had actually crashed having been struck by geese. My friend told me about a rumour that the Department for Homeland Security had initially swung into action having received intelligence that one of the geese had a suspicious looking beard and that Koranic verses had been discovered in the glove compartment of the car left in long-term parking by three of the geese. Luckily the plan to deport all suspicious water fowl had not yet been announced when it was discovered that the 'Koranic verses' were in fact a menu from the local Bulgarian Kebab shop and the beard was a smudge on the CCTV screen so no harm was done!

The big news of the next week has already been decided, of course. Barak Obama is on his way to Washington, cleverly sending out reassuring signals to right wingers by travelling to the capital to take up office by train, just as Benito Mussolini did in 1922. He will be greeted by an enormous cheering crowd, just like, well, Mussolini. Many things have been written about the President-Elect in the past twelve months but I bet he hasn't been compared to many Italian Fascist dictators. Let's hope he doesn't invade Abysinnia.

1950 here we come!

2009-01-11T13:02:00.000-08:00

It's been an interesting start to 1947, I mean 2009. We've had massive nationalization of large sections of the economy, Keynes is back in fashion, governments are printing money, no one can afford to heat their homes and the Israelis are fighting with the previous owners again, following the logic that there would be little point of corralling the entire population of southern Palestine into the tiny space of Gaza if you are just going to let them fire rockets at their former homes whenever they feel like it. The President-Elect of America has promised to sort it all out just as soon as he is inaugurated (translation: he doesn't know what to do and hopes to God that by then the Israelis will have finished so he won't have to decide.) The only aspect of the good old days that has been missing was an antediluvian racist outburst from a member of the Royal Family. Even Prince Philip had lapsed into the occasional unamusing aside about fat children. So thank goodness that Prince Harry is both stupid enough to use racist language about one of his mates and also stupid enough to video it, lose the video and then see it sold to the News of the World.Finally the world is as it is supposed to be!

Amusingly, the news has broken that Barbie was created by a sex-maniac called Jack Ryan. This has come as a surprise, although not to anyone who has ever seen one of them. Apparently Jack particularly enjoyed the fact that the woman who provided the voice of a line of talking Barbies was tall because it meant that he could bury his head in her breasts when he hugged her. I remember buying one of those for my little granddaughter – I always wondered why it kept threatening to sue me for sexual harassment.

Looking into my Crystal Balls - Predictions for 2009

2009-01-01T08:22:00.001-08:00

Many people have asked me to provide my predictions for the year ahead. This isn't something I would normally do, the prediction industry being, in my opinion, a load of hokum. This is especially true of astrology - I am very skeptical. Typical Capricorn. However, I have given in to the demands so here you go.

Barak Obama will publish his new book, “The Effrontery of Daydreams”. Hillary Clinton will release her own book, “Why the Secretary of State is more important than the President and other stories”. George Bush will publish his memoirs, “My Head Hurts – Global Leadership in the 21st Century”.

England will win the Ashes. South Africans everywhere will shrug and mutter about two bald men fighting over a comb.

John McCain will inaugurate the Failed Fighter Pilots of America Association and become its first President.

Madonna’s post mid-life crisis will be ended by her shattered pelvis.

Turkey will award Israel null points in the Eurovision Song Contest. Israel will retaliate by bombing the hell out of Ankara. The U.K. will come last in the Eurovision contest. Several people will be a bit upset.

All of the remaining unemployed bankers in Britain and America will be given jobs advising their government s on how to resolve the economic crisis. All of their advice will involve borrowing stacks of money that we can’t afford to pay back.

The Obama Presidency will be derailed by constant questions about whether Hillary Clinton’s effectiveness is being undermined by the revelations about Bill’s relationship with that intern at the State Department, the Washington correspondent of Al Jazeera and the Mexican girl who does the laundry. Hillary will blame a vast right-wing conspiracy even though there will be only 13 conservatives left in America.

The England football team will win a few more games. The press will declare it the greatest football team of all time.

Quotes of 2008

2008-12-31T04:38:00.000-08:00

Here is a little collection of my favourite quotes from 2008. I am fairly sure that I have remembered them correctly and that none of them happened in dreams but I can't guarentee it so don't expect to find any of them on Wikipedia. Then again...

“Of course the UK economy will continue to grow this year. Those who say otherwise are guilty of talking us into a recession...oh, wait.” Gordon Brown.

"The fundamentals of America's economy are strong. Not like in my day – back then we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and lick the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife." John McCain

"You have to understand that I was completely strapped for cash" - Max Moseley

“You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s tail will still not be uncurly” – John Major declaring his opposition to the first woman to stand for vice-chairperson of the Huntingdon Cricket Club

“Those who talk about the exchange rate are irresponsibly risking a run on the pound...oh wait.” Gordon Brown

“The country is groaning and moaning and screaming for change. Just like you would be after a night with me, baby” Bill Clinton telling the pretty girl in the front row why he endorses Barak Obama.

“You can’t let Sarah Palin be Vice President. A good VP needs to be a strong, experienced character, especially when the President has little executive experience himself. I mean, George W Bush didn’t have much experience when he became President so he appointed Dick Cheney as his VP and look how well that worked out.” Joe Biden.

"This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq. They had a whip-round and got you these for a surprisingly reasonable price" – Iraqi shoe-thrower Muntadhar al-Zeidi

"You can put lipstick on a pig, as many of you lonely farmers have discovered" - Barak Obama on the stump in Alabama.

“You know what they say about the difference between a hockey-mom and a pitbull – that’s right, a pitbull has more foreign policy experience” – Sarah Palin

“I am proud to have been the Chancellor who abolished Boom and Bust…oh wait.” Gordon Brown.

All Nationalities Welcome....Especially Lapps and Poles

2008-12-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

I visited the allergy unit at my local hospital today to deliver a small donation. It is a cause that is dear to my heart as my own sister suffers from hayfever and diabetes. It is important to keep her spirits up, I think, so I buy her little presents. Nothing special, you know, just flowers and chocolate. She's a bit asthmatic as well – I suggested that she take up tennis, just for a bit of a wheeze.

When I got home and read the paper I had a bit of a shock. The headline read, “Lapdancing clubs have been set up by schools, minister admits.” My first thought was that perhaps this was a welcome outburst of entrepreneurial spirit by the schools in question. Then I thought that perhaps it was a work experience project. I was outraged – haven't these people heard that banks all over the city have been sacking staff and cutting bonuses? Who the hell can afford lapdancers these days?

To my relief, I discovered that I had misunderstood. It was merely a bit of disgracefully poor grammar and they meant that lapdancing clubs had been opened next to schools. The poor use of English is something which angers me. Some people don't even know the difference between a colon and a comma. Those of us who had the benefit of a public school education and three years at Oxford know that a colon is used to inform the reader that what follows proves and explains, or simply enumerates elements of what is referred to before while a comma is when you are knocked unconscious for a long time after a bang on the head.

Feathering the Nest

2008-12-14T12:57:00.000-08:00

There has been a welcome outbreak of entrepreneurship in the States A chap called Rod Blagojevich (pictured to the right) has shown commendable enterprise in these hard times by attempting to raise a bit of pocket money by selling off a seat in the Senate which used to belong to Barak Obama, who no longer needs it now that he is running the “Office of the President-Elect”. Incidentally, I understand that John McCain has got himself a new podium sign saying “Office of the President not-Elect” and Hillary Clinton has had one made up which says “Office of the ~~President~~, ~~Vice President~~, Secretary of State-Elect”. Some would say that Mr. Obama is being a bit presumptuous but President Bush seems to have lost interest in the whole running the country thing and has taken to playing dodge the shoe with his Iraqi friends.

Anyway, Governor Blagojevich's inventiveness has not been appreciated as the Feds seem to think that flogging seats in the Senate is a bit crooked. Of course we in Britain banned the practice back in 1832, when John McCain was still having his first mid-life crisis. But what about the cash-for-honours affair? I hear you ask. Well, the difference was that instead of being paid for seats in the Upper House of Parliament, the Labour Party merely accepted loans which they won't ever pay back, it being 21^st century Britain after all.

The whole Chicago episode might even cause problems for the President-Elect himself, as Blagojevich had been having conversations with Barak's chief of staff, a man called Rahm Edwards. And what a fine job Rahm's parents did in naming him. Impressive imagination.

Save the Cheerleader.....

2008-12-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

Gordon was generally deemed to have made a bit of a fool of himself when he claimed in the House of Commons that he had 'saved the world' no less. The story was that this had been a slip of the tongue - he had meant to say that he had saved the banking system. However, my sources tell me that he actually meant it. Indeed, if you listen very carefully to the recording you can hear him say, 'we not only saved the world, we also saved the cheerleader!' Alert readers will remember George W Bush's college cheerleading days. A coincidence? I think not!

Gordon's global leadership has been accepted even in Germany, from where the last few pockets of resistance to the Era of Gordon have been pursuing their quixotic campaign to convince us that spending trillions of borrowed money that we don't have might not be the best idea. The Germans have agreed to sign up to Gordon's Single European Financial Stimulus Plan. I am not sure they have quite got the hang of saving the planet, though. They are insisting on spending money that they actually have rather than borrowing money that they can't afford to pay back. Oh well, they'll soon learn.

Luckily, George Bush seems to have got the right idea and is now preparing to start throwing money at the American automobile industry. This is in answer to prayers said in churches across that great nation for divine intervention to save the big car makers. A correspondent of mine wrote to me this week about a moving sermon he had heard in which the pastor reminded his flock of that Bible passage in which Our Lord cast the moneychangers from the Temple, after which they were given cushy jobs in Pilate's administration and had considerable success in reconstructing the Jerusalem camel trading industry upon which so many Judean jobs depended.

Oh God!

2008-12-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

I read a story this week about a little 12 year old girl in Devon who got into trouble with her school for insisting on wearing a purity ring. Apparently this isn't a euphemism but rather something that young people sometimes wear to symbolize their commitment to abstain from sex. The girl, or rather her parents, think that this amounts to religious discrimination. You remember that bit from the Sermon on the Mount (and I make no apologies for using the King James Version). It comes just after that bit about the meek.

“And Blessed is she who dost wait for the One and who gaineth the approval of her father and doth marry before lying with a man, and who doth symbolize her commitment by purchasing a ring which doth look great and which can be purchasethd online for a reasonable price”

The school refused on health and safety grounds, citing the many ring injuries suffered in Devon every year. Ironically, none of these were caused by abstinence.

My own religious beliefs are old fashioned Church of England. During my political career, of course, I always managed to keep my religious beliefs to myself, never allowing exhortations to love thy neighbour to interfere with completing the latest arms deal or cutting unemployment benefits. Only once did I have doubts – I dabbled with Atheism back in the Sixties. Sadly, my faith just wasn't strong enough and I soon lapsed. Even now I can't quite bring myself to believe that Richard Dawkins really exists. Luckily, today's politicians have more faith than I did, which is why they can keep a straight face when they suggest that the way to fix a recession brought about by reckless borrowing to buy things we couldn't afford is to encourage everyone to buy things they can't afford with money that they have borrowed recklessly. It makes me giggle every time. And that is why I am not Prime Minister and Gordon Brown is!

Let the Good Times Roll!

2008-11-30T11:36:00.000-08:00

Up in space, NASA have made yet another invaluable contribution to the future of humanity by inventing a system for recycling urine into drinking water. And what a fine use of public money, even at this time of great austerity. Previously if I wanted to drink my own piss they'd have called for the men in white coats. It is certainly an improvement on blowing it out the airlock.

I understand that the fight against obesity may be close to a breakthrough. My young niece tells me that scientists are working on a supplement which will trick the body into creating a hormone that will suppress appetite. This is certainly an improvement on the Gordon Brown / George Bush approach to the obesity epidemic which is to destroy the economy to the point where we have to reintroduce rationing and round the clock soup kitchens.

On that theme, many of us have been reassured by young Barak Obama's appointments to his new cabinet. We had feared that he might fall into the trap of bringing in new faces with original thinking just because they might know what they are doing. We shouldn't have worried – he is instead following Gordon Brown's lead by packing government with as many of the people responsible for the economic crisis as possible. Quite right too. They can't be trusted to run loose. Who knows what damage they might do?

The Chinese, meanwhile, are getting worried. I had the great pleasure to share lunch with an old business acquaintance yesterday and he explained how the Chinese economy works. It seems that they've been telling their people to invest the pittance they earn for working fifteen hours a day in a sweatshop in bonds which are issued by American banks which was then used to lend money to Americans and Europeans who can't pay it back so that they can use it to buy cheep stuff that they don't need and which is made by those same Chinese sweat-shop employees. I know, it is impossible to see the flaw in this plan but apparently it is not going so well now that no one in the West can afford to pay back their loans. So you can see that it is even more important than you thought that you go out and spend as much money as you can like the government wants you too. So spend, spend ,spend! The future of the world depends on it!

Darling to the Rescue

2008-11-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

I had lunch today with Toby, an old friend who works for one of the investment banks in the City and who is well connected with the Treasury. I wanted to pick his brain about Alistair Darling's newly announced prescription for the ailing British economy ie. Borrow a fortune and hope that everything will be all right.

'The main thing,' he told me, 'is to protect the irresponsible lending industry which has made Great Britain what it is today. The Government must take the lead before it is too late! I mean, how will anyone afford a new BMW if they can't borrow the money against the value of their home? They can't all have an accident at work and sue their employer!'

I asked him just how much he thought the Government would end up borrowing. He wasn't sure but he thought it was roughly equal to around three quarters of the entire economic output of the planet. I suggested that this sounded like rather a lot. 'That's nothing', he said, 'the American will soon owe about four times the entire economic output of the solar system. Apparently they are having to invent a new number to express it.'

There was just one thing I didn't understand, however. Who are we actually borrowing all this money from? Toby wasn't certain. 'The Chinese, I think. Probably.' But doesn't this put the Chinese in rather a powerful position? 'Only if we pay it back' he said with a smile.

Come Dancing

2008-11-23T09:46:00.000-08:00

Britain was rocked this week by the scandal involving the continued participation of John Sargeant in the celebrity ballroom show Strictly Come Dancing. John is a hopeless dancer but the viewing public, who are now chronically and in my view very healthily unable to take telephone votes seriously, kept voting for him to continue in the show. His competitors complained, suggesting that the show was all about the dancing (which is why they hired a bunch of b-list celebs instead of actual dancers) and John was forced to fall on his sword. The whole episode brought back bad memories for yours truly. Yes, a similar thing happened to me back in the 50s when I was disqualified from the National Hokey-Cokey championship for putting it in when I should have been shaking it all about.

Further down the news schedules, naturally, I have noticed numerous government ministers, Labour Party backbenchers and various apologists have been working hard to rechristen the dog's breakfast that used to be the British economy 'the global financial crisis which started in America.' This is known in the trade as the 'I never done nuffink, honest' defence (it is similar to the 'A bigger boy made me do it' defence which they used after the Iraq war went pear shaped), and it is popular amongst governments of all stripes because it lets you blame the Americans for everything. For the millionth time I find myself thankful that the government no longer employs spin since Honest Gordon took over.

Gordon has been accusing the Tories of 'lacking compassion' for pointing out that it might not be wise to respond to a crisis caused by irresponsible borrowing with a massive splurge paid for with irresponsible borrowing, as someone might ask for it to be paid back. I have a great deal of sympathy for Gordon's view. My own family has suffered quite severely recently thanks to some dubious investments and I shall be attempting to cheer them up by buying them fabulously extravagant Christmas presents. I can't afford this, obviously, but I have solved this problem - I have already stolen their credit card details and that will easily cover the cost!

Polling

2008-11-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

The financial crisis is causing problems for the organizers of the London 2012 Olympics who fear that they may have to scale back on their plans. I was speaking yesterday with one of Boris Johnson's advisers about some of the cost-cutting schemes that are being considered. Shockingly, they are even contemplating changes to the events themselves. The Boxing will now include all other forms of packaging. On the same theme we will be stockpiling decommissioned barbed wire from Guantanamo Bay once it has been closed to be used in the Fencing. And the athletics will now climax with Underarm Javelin. He also passed on a bit of gossip about the British women's Badminton champion. He says that she has had a difficult year – it has been all shuttle and no fun at all.

Meanwhile, I visited one of our local Territorial Army bases earlier in the week to mark Armistice Day. While I was there, I met a young female soldier. Now you may think that this would be a problem for an old traditionalist like me, but you would be wrong. Back in the last war, I served with several admirable women officers when I was being trained to handle bazookas. So are meeting went very well, despite one small misunderstanding when she misheard something I said while I was reminiscing about my wartime experiences. All was well, however, when I explained that I had said V.E!

I had a little shock this week when I discovered that my Personal Assistant Jemima has joined the Liberal Democrats and has been helping out with in local constituency ahead of an upcoming by-election. It is a strong Tory area, of course, so there is little hope of making an impact; indeed she says that she and the elderly prospective candidate have been doing a lot of polling together and that he expects to lose his deposit!

Onwards to the Future!!

2008-11-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

Well, with Barak Obama’s Presidency of the United States in sight, I’m pleased to see that he is getting down to business. He is already putting into practice his first scheme to raise funds with which to fill the hole in the public finances. He has gone into business as a flag salesman albeit with a fairly limited range – you can see some of them in the picture to the right.

The race is already on for a share of the spoils. I shared a train carriage yesterday with a Democratic Party official with whom I am acquainted and I took the opportunity to ask which names I should be looking out for. It seems that another old acquaintance of mine, Laurence Summers, is in line for the job of Treasury Secretary. I remember sharing several enjoyable evenings with Laurence, and Lady Collar of course, back when I was advising the government of the day on waste disposal policy, engaging in some blue skies thinking over dinner as to how to deal with the growing rubbish mountain. On one occasion I’m afraid I had rather too much Port and opined that we should send all our garbage to the Third World! It’s funny the things you say, isn’t it. A little later, when Lady Collar had gone to bed, I shared with him my grandfather’s theory, from the days when he lead the brave fight against those dangerous extremists in the Suffragettes, that the real reason why woman did not appear in positions of power and influence was because they didn’t work as hard as men and because they weren’t very good at arithmetic and so forth. How we laughed! I often wonder why he lost his position as President of Harvard but it seems that the University’s loss will be America’s gain!

Laurence has served his country before, of course, as one of Clinton’s Treasury Secretaries. I’m pleased to see that, like Her Majesty’s government, Barak Obama can see that the way to get out of the financial crisis is to employ as many as possible of the people who got us into it. In this spirit, he is also considering employing Timothy Geithner, who is the current head of the New York Federal Reserve bank and who helped to dream up the idea of giving the banks $700 billion to pay to themselves as bonuses. Some have argued that appointing Geithner would be failing to deliver change. This is nonsense. Geithner will have changed from a very rich banker into a very rich government minister. What more can you ask?

The Labour View - The Most Meaningful Moment in History

2008-11-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

I had the great fortune to be able to speak today about the week's momentous events with an old Civil Rights Activist from the Southern State of Mississippi who happened to be in Britain this week. 'I never thought,' she told me with a tear in her eye, 'that I would live to see the day when Gordon Brown would win a by-election!' She went on to tell me that she thought Labour's win in Glenrothes was probably the most meaningful event ever.

The voters of Fife voted for Change, wisely recognizing that having Gordon as Prime Minister is totally different from having Gordon as Chancellor of the Exchequer – just as the Russians bravely voted to change President Vladimir Putin for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earlier in the year. The rest of the world has responded to this brave lead – the people of New Zealand have elected a new government and apparently the Americans have done too. The new President is Barak Obama, and he is the first man ever to win an election by not being George W. Bush. Of course his opponent, John McCain, isn't George W. Bush either but the People could see clearly that he was less not George W. Bush than Obama is. Now all we have to do is hope that all of the problems of the world actually were Dubya's fault so, fingers crossed everyone!

I don't think I'm breaking any confidences if I tell you that one of Barak's first acts as President Elect was to receive a call from Gordon Brown himself, who gave valuable advice on how to solve the credit crisis. This involves cutting interest rates so that the banks can borrow money cheaply from other banks and lend it to people who can't afford to pay it back so that they can buy houses which they can't afford and start pushing house prices back up to levels that can't be sustained because that will make everything all right again. The only problem is that none of the banks have any money to lend to the other banks. Gordon has shown the world that this is easy to solve; simply give them lots of taxpayers money. Gordon is confident that Barak will see the wisdom of this little work of genius. As I always say, fight fire with fire, and fight irresponsible lending with irresponsible lending!

Incidentally, I hear that Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula 1 supremo, and dedicated tobacco promoter has been offering Gordon Brown some presentational advice. He suggested that Gordon should capitalize on the success of Barak Obama and Lewis Hamilton by blacking up and wearing a curly wig. 'Everyone would understand that it was just a little joke,' explained Bernie, 'and it is not like he'll be getting whipped by five prostitutes or anything like that.'

Election Campaigns are Great

2008-11-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

An election, you say? In America? Well, they kept that quiet! Yes, it is true. In just two more days, campaigning begins for the 2012 election for President of the United States. And we already know what the key question of that election will be;

Canvasser : Will you be voting for Sarah Palin?
Voter : Sarah who?

I was actually approached during the week to offer some advice for the Palin for President 2012 campaign. I suggested a couple of possible slogans. “Palin – she puts the Ass in Alaska!” and “Vote Palin, or she'll shoot!”

Meanwhile, I have been chatting to one of my City chums about the government's ongoing attempts to rescue the banking industry. He is most appreciative of Gordon Brown's efforts. He says that the few jobless bankers who have not been given jobs in the government will soon be gainfully employed by the new beefed-up regulators. I asked him if he agreed that a lack of regulators had helped to cause the credit crunch. He was surprised at the question. “Of course not,” he said, shaking his head at my ignorance, “the regulators didn't intervene because they all thought the bankers were right. How were they supposed to know that letting the banks lend money they didn't have to people who couldn't pay it back might not be the most prudent idea?” No, it seems that the push to put lots of new regulation in place is in fact a clever taxpayer-funded job creation scheme for. This is a very clever idea, I must concede. After all, lets face it, they are unqualified to work in any real industry and it would cost substantially more to retrain them to work flipping burgers or stacking shelves.

I also heard this week that scientists have been working as hard as ever and have discovered that love and hate is caused by the same chemical in the brain. I already knew this. The chemical is called alcohol and it is one of nature's greatest miracles!

The Nuclear Option

2008-10-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

I spent a very pleasant lunchtime today with one of the few people in the country who is making any money. He works for British Energy, which is owned, naturally enough, by the French and which stands to benefit greatly from the UK government decision to build lots of new nuclear power stations. This is being sold as a way of fighting climate change but is really because we shall soon run out of power and will be reduced to the level of Burkina Faso or California.

He completely denies the more colourful rumours about the dangers of nuclear power. I asked him if it might be the case that living in proximity to a nuclear power station might increase he risk of infertility in men. “Bing,” he told me in a reassuring tone of voice, “I have spent my entire working life at Sellafield and Sizewell B and I can assure you that my testicles function as well as ever. All three of them.”

I was still a bit worried about the environmentalists. He wasn't concerned. In fact, he was quite pleased with himself over the cunning plan to pass this off as being environmentally friendly instead of being the harbinger of the apocalypse. And just in case the greens get all stroppy again they have a backup plan which involves putting windmills on the cooling towers, which will be able to power ever single emergency exit light in the plant for twelve hours per day so long as it is windy. They won't be able to argue with that!

The Truth is out There

2008-10-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

Good News! The United Kingdom has made yet another invaluable contribution to humanity's exploration of Outer Space. Bravely ignoring the fact that that no trace of alien life has been found by anyone outside the American Midwest and Gloucestershire (which is the British equivalent), a scientist called Doctor John Elliott has convinced somebody to give him funding for his new Alien Language Translation programme. This will allow us to communicate with aliens, should they exist and should they even speak a language at all. Personally I think Dr Elliott might be wasting his time. If Aliens do arrive somewhere over our little island I can confidently predict that we will try to communicate with him/her/it by speaking slowly and loudly in English and expecting him/her/it to understand, in the time-honoured fashion.

I had a deeply disturbing shock when I spoke to one of my Irish friends today – I had telephoned to ask if he knew any good banks in which I might hide some of my money in an attempt to exploit the Irish Government's savings guarantee. He told me to pour a stiff drink and sit down before he told me his news – and how grateful I was for the warning! It turns out that Irish ministers have betrayed their counterparts around the world by voting to take a 10% pay cut! Yes, you did read that right. It is appalling. Or so I thought. It turns out that they have also massively increased tax rates on the rich, the poor and the middle classes so they'd probably never have seen that extra 10% anyway.

Before I go, I had an interesting request to support an important and consequential campaign – take a look. Proof, if it were needed, that the world's crackpots and wierdos aren't going to let the small matter of the end of capitalism distract them from what's really important!

Out of the Frying Pan

2008-10-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

It has been another dodgy week for the economy. The only people who have made any money at all have been photographers taking pictures of despairing city traders.

I have been chatting this weekend to an old friend of mine who 'retired' from his banking job in the City last year, with an adequate pension and several useful little share options after a small piece of bad luck when his firm hired the last scrupulous accountant in London and the wretched man told the shareholders what was really going on. As it happens, he is an acquaintance of the newly minted Lord Myners, Minister for the City and, entirely coincidentally, donor to Gordon Brown's campaign to become leader of the Labour Party in an uncontested election. (I understand that Labour's election strategists are considering the slogan 'I can't believe its not Democracy!')

Anyway, my former banker chum has been filling me in on the gossip from the Prime Minister's new National Economic Council, also known as the real government of the UK. I understand that the first idea they considered, proposed by Labour's fundraising unit, was to raise additional capital for the banks by selling off seats in the House of Lords. This was rejected on the grounds that they've already sold so many of them that you can get one for a hundred quid down Camden Market, or twenty if you're prepared to make do with a shoddily made Vietnamese copy.

The next idea, proposed by keen football fan Alistair Darling, was to find a rich Arab, Indian or even Russian to take the country over in the manner of a Premier League football club, many of which have almost as much debt as the country. Alistair even proposed that the deal could be sweetened by changing the country's name slightly to Kingdom United – hardly anyone would even notice. You might think the idea of buying a country is silly but the USA once bought Alaska, and had they not then the world's last great superpower would have been deprived of the singer Jewel, the wolf-themed movie classic White Fang starring Ethan Hawke, and the comedy politician and power-abuser Sarah Palin. But this plan was scuppered too – somebody pointed out that if an Arab wanted to take over a country he could pick Iceland up for next to nothing. Plus it is tidier than Britain, it is getting bigger every year due to volcanic activity, and the women are both taller and blonder. Except for Bjork, who my PA Jemima tells me is a popular singer like Nana Mouskouri or Helen Shapiro.

Then, just as they were beginning to lose hope, they turned to the great man himself, Lord Myners. And so the greatest idea in modern British history was born. The banks got us into this mess by lending money they didn't have to people who couldn't pay it back. The government will get us out of this mess by lending money they don't have to banks who can't afford to pay it back. And so the circle of life is complete!

I asked my friend if he thought this plan would work. 'Of course,' he said, 'it certainly made me rich!'

It's that man again!

2008-10-04T14:29:00.001-07:00

Gordon Brown has, in what can only be regarded as an act of genius (insane genius, perhaps but genius nonetheless) moved decisively to tackle the financial crisis. He says he wants to invent a new way of governing, apparently by replacing the elected government with an appointed one.

Spearheading this new dawn will be none other than Peter Mandelson. This has caused some surprise due to the well known animosity between the great man and the Prime Minister. They both acknowledged that they have 'had their ups and downs', in rather the same way that Stalin had his ups and downs with Hitler.

But, I hear you ask, how can Peter be brought back into government when he is no longer a Member of Parliament? Well, this small problem has been solved by making him into a peer of the realm in accordance with the old British tradition of ennobling failed politicians who the current leadership thinks it needs for some reason. This saves him the bother of getting elected and, as an additional bonus his seat in the House of Lords is, thanks to the Labour Party's far-sighted reforms, a salaried position. After all, who can get by on a mere Minister's salary these days? Especially when your chances of a nice directorship in the City are fading faster every day. They can't even afford to employ useful people anymore!

Lord Mandelson is, of course, uniquely qualified to deal with the current crisis, having once had to resign from government after lying on a mortgage application for a house he couldn't possibly afford.

Also elevated to the House of Lords and given a job in the government is a chap called Paul Myners. His qualification for a job in government is that he is the only person left in the country who has any money – he is the director of a hedge fund firm who have made a fortune at everybody else's expense by short selling shares in banks in a welcome demonstration to the rest of us of how to get by in hard times. He also gave £12700 to Gordon Brown's campaign to become leader of the Labour Party. Some might say that this was rather a large donation considering that there was no actual leadership election as Gordon was the only candidate, so you might think that Paul can't have needed to spend all that much. I hear that the chaps in the city were wondering if he might have lost his knack for making money. How wrong they were! Seats in government don't come cheap, you know! And even a seat in this government is more secure than a job in the City.

Incidentally, for those of you unfamiliar with aristocratic rank, a lord is somewhat lower than a prince but slightly higher than a prince of darkness, so in Peter's case that makes it a promotion.

History Repeating

2008-09-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

We live in a terribly cynical age but I for one do not believe that McCain was merely trying to score points when he announced that he would be breaking off his campaign to work on the credit crisis. After all, he is old enough to remember the terrible consequences of that other great stock market crash, when the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720. You can see a young John pictured to the right.

Of course back then people got into trouble by thinking they could get rich through investing in companies that wanted to make guns that fired square cannonballs or buying up the Irish Bogs. There was even a company which convinced speculators to invest £2000 “For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage but nobody knows what it is.” So you can see that people in the eighteenth century made much more sensible investment decisions than those at the start of the twenty first. Of course the big difference is that back then the trouble started as a cunning plan to reduce government debt while this time we are trying to solve the problem by massively increasing government debt. The other difference of course is that back then hundreds of politicians lost their shirts while this time they have cleverly ensured that the taxpayer will carry the can. We've come a long way in three centuries!

The weeks events have had the effect of making the Chinese into the western world's main creditor and they have been celebrating this new status with their flashy new space program. This week they conducted their first ever spacewalk, boldly going where no man has gone for a couple of weeks, successfully dragging the country into the 1950s. Still, it's considerably more impressive than us Europeans. We've had to make do with a chap from Switzerland flying across the English Channel strapped to a jet powered ironing board. You can see him here!

As for myself, I enjoyed a small party at home. My PA Jemima offered to provide the entertainment – she she has been taking dancing lessons and wanted to show off what she had learned. I was a bit concerned when she told me she was going to do the dance of the seven voles. “Don't you mean veils?” I asked. “That's funny,” she replied, “That's just what the man in the pet shop said!” Mind you, I would love to know how she got those voles twirling in both directions at the same time!

It's a Rich Man's World

2008-09-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

It's been a tough week in the city, and indeed on Wall Street and around the world, all summed up in the Financial Times' headline on Thursday, “We're all F*****d!!” However, I am happy to say that the worst is over.

I must say that it is very wise of the taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic to bail out those poor chaps in the financial sector who have had such bad luck lately. After all, if it had not been for the generous lending practices of these great financial institutions many of those same taxpayers would never have had the experience of owning their own home, nor of having that home repossessed. Lending non-existent money to people who can't afford to pay you back may seem like criminal stupidity to the untrained eye but you must remember that bankers have their trophy wives to pay for and the bonuses one makes when one restricts oneself to sane practices just don't cut the mustard. One doesn't want to have to make do with a Filipino. Besides, if the banks go out of business then the government won't be able to borrow the money they need to prop up the banks! Then where would we be?

Some of the chaps have lost their jobs, though. We shouldn't feel too sorry for them, however. After all, they apparently were not very good at it and they will probably all be much happier following careers running whelk stalls, or in politics. The recruitment agencies have been busy – there was great excitement when a rumour went round that there may be one now former banker from Ireland who once successfully organized a piss up in the Guinness factory. Sadly, the story turned out to be apocryphal.

The Labour View - Trouble in Paradise

2008-09-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

It has been a traumatic week in the Labour Party. Things cannot go on as before. Decisive action is called for. That is why some of us have grasped the nettle and taken the bull by the horns (not both at the same time, obviously) Already a number of senior figures have joined this bold move - like Joan Ryan and Barry Gardiner. I looked them up – apparently they are both in the Labour Party! Joan held the vitally important role of Gordon Brown's envoy to Cyprus (I hear she spent a very week there in 1976) and Barry was Gordon's forestry envoy, as he has a lovely apple tree in his back garden. Anyway, all of us are united in the belief that we need the party needs to act and we have decided on a course of action. We have written to the Party asking for nomination forms to be issued for an new election for the leadership in the hope of, um, provoking a debate over the future direction of the government or something like that. Hopefully one of the Party's big names like..oh what's he called..ah, yes, David Miliband will respond by throwing his hat into the ring. Incidentally, David has had some success recently in his quest to find someone who has heard of him. He has revealed that he had a lively exchange with the Russian foreign minister who accused him of having, “No F*****g idea about Russian History”. David was pleased, remarking that his Russian counterpart seems to know everything about him!

Not that our actions this week should be seen as an act of disloyalty. No! Gordon is a fine leader, one of the finest this country has ever been lucky enough to have. He has been badly let down, in my opinion, by the voters, who seem unable to appreciate his qualities. I suspect he is the victim of hidden racism against his Scottishness – he is just like Martin Luther King, really!

That said, my intervention has certainly struck a chord. My inbox is bulging. I have already received an e-mail from a T. Blair congratulating me and wishing me luck, one from a Mr. B. Obama wanting to know if I would be interested in hosting a neighbourhood fundraising coffee morning and one from a Mr. Bankole from Lagos offering me a large amount of money if I give him my bank details. I forwarded this last one to the Treasury – I think it could become the centrepiece of our new economic policy!

Proper Jobs

2008-09-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

I was talking the other day to a friend of mine who owns a recruitment company. He was telling me that he had been contacted by a local council who wanted to recruit something called an Education Centre Nourishment Production Assistant. This turned out to mean a dinner lady at a local school. Really! In the old days people had proper jobs like Miner, Engineer and Lord Privy Seal! No wonder the country is such a mess!

Meanwhile, I see Gordon Brown has been doing his bit for the McCain campaign by giving Senator Obama the kiss of death by praising him in a magazine article. Obama immediately protested about Brown's intervention and insisted that Gordon issue a statement of support for John McCain. I telephoned an old friend of mine in New York to ask him what he made of this. He said, 'Gordon who?'

I also noticed an interesting story from Morocco where a chap has been jailed for writing in a blog criticizing the king. As if this were not bad enough, another Moroccan is languishing in prison having set up a facebook profile, whatever that is, in the name of one of the King's brothers. Imagine, someone being dishonest enough to impersonate a dignitary on the internet in this way! Appalling! It would never happen in this country!

One thing we have learned this week, though, is that you can put lipstick on a pig but it will still be a pig. Except that it will be considerably more attractive and capable of achieving high political office!

Hope from the Frontier!

2008-09-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

Since American politics went all Monty Python last week, I hear that the Labour Party have been busily trying to copy John McCain's masterstroke in bringing in Sarah Palin to liven up his campaign. Harriet Harman has, apparently, booked snowmobile lessons, Hazel Blears has been seen toting a massive sub machine gun around the Department for Communities, whatever that is, and I hear that Dawn Primarolo has renamed her children Avenue, Handbag and Cat-flap, all in imitation of the Alaskan Wonder. They've also sent a delegation to the Shetland Islands after hearing about a fundamentalist gun-nut who came second in the Miss Lerwick contest in 1978 and who only wears clothes that she has trapped herself, hoping to offer her the Deputy Prime Minister's position. She turned out to be a Scottish Nationalist and told them to get stuffed.

I was reading today about the disgrace that has fallen upon my Alma Mater, Harrow school, who have had to expel their head boy for drug taking. This would certainly never have happened in my day. No! One might Tolley up before Trials, spend extra time in the Ducker trying to get into Torpids or wear one's Bluers, Greyers and Dossers but one would never want to make the school look foolish in this way! Besides, how would you know what the hell everyone was talking about if you were off your face?

I was discussing this the other day with an old school chum called Oliver who went into Advertising, although he is now celebrating the tenth anniversary of his lucrative early retirement. I asked him what he though of the state of his old industry; not much, as it turned out. As evidence of its decline, he offered the following example. Pizza express had a recent campaign which claimed that, “nothing says I love you like a pizza” - Oliver says he once meet a man who claimed that he had taught his dog to say “I love you” and frankly that had impressed him rather more. I disagreed with him. My PA Jemima says that she had a delightful evening last Valentines day when her boyfriend, having seen this advert, took her to Pizza Express and offered her a meat feast!

Python for President

2008-08-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

Having dipped my toes in the festering waters of US politics, I feel duty bound to offer a Republican comment by way of balance. Luckily, John McCain has actually managed to do something surprising enough to get a bit of notice in the press. He has named his own Vice-Presidential candidate. Her name is Sarah Palin, the niece of the famous Monty Python satirist Eric Idle. With a firm grounding in the 1960s satire boom and a successful television and movie career before writing one of the most successful musicals to hit Broadway in decades, Sarah makes a welcome addition to the Republican ticket. She would surely be the best qualified Vice President since internet-inventor Al Gore. There is no truth in the rumour that celebrity non-Vice Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has exploded.

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, nothing much has changed. The Foreign Secretary David Milliband has been in the Ukraine, trying to find somebody who has heard of him. Gordon Brown, meanwhile, has wisely been keeping well clear of the Russian Business and has instead been enjoying the delights of China, hobnobbing with gold medal winning Olympians and hoping that some of the Boris Johnston magic will rub off on him.

My contacts tell me that he has a new plan for regaining the political initiative. He hopes to acquire one of those big booming microphones that make Barak Obama's emptiest platitudes sound deeply profound. This would allow Gordon to win the next election without going to the trouble of thinking up any policies. I fear, however, that this his plan is doomed to failure – Cameron has already got there before him! Ah well, as Sarah Palin would say - "Always look on the bright side of life!"

VP?

2008-08-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

I normally refrain from commenting on American politics – not my area of expertise, you know – but I see that young Barak Obama has picked an old acquaintance of mine as his running mate for the Presidency. I remember meeting Joe Biden back in'87 when I was visiting America and he was running his own Presidential campaign. He asked me if I had any good ideas for a speech. I was a bit jetlagged, I must admit, and I fobbed him off with some piece of guff I'd heard from Neil Kinnock – well, I wasn't going to give him any of the good stuff, was I? I never heard how that speech went for Joe.

Kinnock, of course, went on to lose the unloseable election. I'm sure it won't be an omen, though. In adding Joe to the ticket, Barak has recruited a man who is so electorally popular that ,when the votes in the Iowa Caucuses were counted, he managed to poll almost a whole percent.

Meanwhile, the Olympic Games are bound for Great Britain! And what a fine display the British Olympic Association put on during the closing ceremony in Beijing! It was a stroke of genius – who better to sum up Britain's youthful energy and creativity than that young popular musician Jimmy Page? And who better to sum up British sporting prowess than the celebrity 'footballer' David Beckham whose performance in watching the European Championships from his home in LA was so impressive during the summer? And to think that some people are worried about London's ability to live up to Beijing!

As the credit crunch continues to bite, I have decided to offer a few more tips as to how to weather the storm.

1) Have an accident at work; fall off a ladder or fall over a piece of carelessly discarded packaging for example. Then you can sue your employer for a few hundred grand. You needn't feel guilty – it is your right and they'll be driven out of business before long by the high oil price anyway. I recommend my son's new law firm. If you are a home owner, he can also arrange you a no-questions asked loan should you want to take a holiday, fill your tank with petrol or pay off all the other loans that you got even though you couldn't afford to pay it back.

2) Open a law firm specializing in convincing people to sue their employers over insignificant accidents that were nobody's fault.

3) Start offering dodgy loans to people who can't afford them – even if things go tits-up the government will bail you out for the good of the economy.

4) Get elected as an MEP – there is no money in being at Westminster any more. If you are Labour and in favour of keeping the John Lewis list then you've only got a few months till you're voted out and if you're a Tory then Cameron is going to make you give up your expenses! And just because that's what the taxpayers want! I really don't know what has happened to this country. If you are in the European Parliament the everyone knows you are corrupt but nobody can muster the enthusiasm to give a stuff so you are on the pig's back!

The Labour View

2008-08-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

Hello loyal readers! Let me introduce myself – Harry Collar, great-nephew of the great Sir Bingham. When I decided to follow the family profession and go into politics in the nineties, Bing (or uncle Sir Bingham KBE, as I know him) wisely advised me to join the Labour party, having seen which way the wind was blowing ie. Ineffectually, from the mouth of Norman Lamont. As a result of following this wise advice, I have enjoyed a long career at the heart of power as a Special Adviser (spin doctor to you) to various Labour ministers. I could have been a minister myself but decided that I wanted to be able to wield some actual power.

Anyhow, Sir Bingham, in the interests of fairness (something we take very seriously here in the UK), has asked me to offer a few thoughts about the current political landsacpe. Well, it has been a very difficult few months for those of us who work for the Labour Party – although obviously none of it is our fault. The irresponsible news media we now have has been blaming us for things over which we have no control. Take Ed Balls' problems over the SATS tests which has been entirely blamed on Ed just because he is the minister responsible for schools.

This really is most unfair - Ed has had to take the blame for something which is clearly the fault of ETS - the private company contracted to do the marking. The whole point of such outsourcing responsibility to whatever bunch of gangsters produces the glossiest brochure is so that ministers don't have to take the blame! But do the press understand that? No. They want to blame the government just because we were elected to run the country and it was our idea to sell the contract in the first place. And, as a result, Ed will not be in a good position to succeed to the leadership should Gordon have to stand down – robbing the country of one of the finest political leaders of his generation. However, I believe the British people won't be fooled and will continue to support Gordon. I have already suggested the slogan for our next general election campaign - “Labour got us into this mess, Labour will get us out of it!”

It is true that, thanks to the childishness of the press, the leadership has become an issue. There is no denying it. Sir Bingham has asked me to run the rule over the contenders now that Balls is out of the running; Miliband, Harman, Straw and Johnson. Once I had looked them up in 'Who's Who' I came to the conclusion that any of them would make an equally fine leader and I have been diligent in contacting each of them to let them know, as well as e-mailing the PM's office to reassure them that this in no way contradicts my belief that Gordon is one of the finest leaders this country has had since Tony Blair; one who could continue in high office for many years yet. That said, I have been particularly impressed by Miliband's performance on the world stage as he has visited numerous countrys on Britain's behalf to meet foreign dignitaries and tell them who he is. Once I had looked him up, I also remembered that I once had the pleasure of accompanying Alan Johnson on a visit to my local hospital where he met some nurses and told them who he was. Harriet Harman, meanwhile, seems just lovely and Jack Straw wears glasses, which always makes someone look impressively intelligent, I think. Any one of them could be a terrific Prime Minister – as good as Gordon Brown, in fact. Yes, the future looks bright! Things can only get better!

holidays

2008-08-02T12:03:00.000-07:00

Gordon Brown is off on holiday, sensibly showing how in touch with the common man he is by remaining in Britain instead of swanning off to stay at some sun-drenched luxury villa owned by Silvio Burlosconi or Cliff Richard or one of the Bee Gees like Tony Blair used to. Unfortunately this only serves to remind everyone that they are now too poor to be able to holiday overseas and are having to put up with Margate or Bognor Regis. What Gordon doesn't understand is that people in this country want their leaders to be aspirational – even if all they aspire to is to live like a king at someone else's expense.

I discussed this today over lunch with my old friend Ted, a stalwart of the Labour Party in the great days of the seventies when he wouldn't have been seen dead having lunch anywhere other than a greasy spoon which served tea in mugs – this being how one displayed one's connection with the common man in the old days. Luckily, a few years as a New Labour Peer has done wonders for his taste. Incidentally, I once asked him about the irony of an old socialist like him being an unelected member of parliament but he stoutly defended his position, arguing that by replacing the hereditary peerage with a system of patronage for sale the Labour Party had successfully dragged the House of Lords out of the middle ages and into the eighteenth century – an excellent example of modernization! He takes the same position towards outsourcing and PFI. Selling off the right to run prisons and so on worked perfectly well when Walpole was Prime Minister, he says, so why not now? Besides, if you don't let the private sector run things then you have to let ministers do it, and most of them couldn't run a bath. You can't argue with reasoning like that, can you?

I took the opportunity to ask him who he thought would be the next leader of the Labour Party; Milliband, Harman, Johnson or Straw? Once I had reminded him who each of them is, he offered the opinion that it didn't matter who it was so long as the Labour Party won. “After all,” he said, “Labour is the party of the poor and there are a lot more of them about now!”

Great Political Leadership

2008-07-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

I see that nice Barak Obama has been in Britain hoping that some of the Gordon Brown magic will rub off on him. They had a two hour meeting in which Gordon treated the young Senator to a run down of his greatest achievements as head of government. The pictures released afterwards displayed Barak's remarkable ability to keep a straight face – a quality that him will serve him well if he wins the presidency and has to be polite to George Bush in public. In the interests of political impartiality, Barak was careful to acknowledge all of Britains national political parties. His visit was split into three parts. There was the Labour visit, the Conservative visit, and tea and biscuits.

The Labour Party have, while all this has been going on, been running the rule over prospective new leaders, still convinced that they are not really unpopular at all, it is just Gordon Brown's fault. They are trying to think of ways to get Gordon to resign. Plan number one appears to be to get Geoff Hoon to tell him he should leave. Once Gordon has remembered who Geoff Hoon is, he would listen to Geoff's message that only a great statesman such as Gordon would have the courage to stand down in the interests of party and country, following those great wartime leaders, Neville Chamberlain and Anthony Eden. They would then be able to draw a veil over the whole Brown leadership, assuming Jack Straw doesn't object. Jack is, in fact, seen in some quarters as the energetic young leader that the country needs (John McCain is said to be watching the situation closely, although he suspects that, at 61, Jack might benefit from another thirty years experience just to make sure he's ready). The other option is Alan Johnson – a man who is such a charismatic natural leader that he came second in the race to replace John Prescott! Go on Labour Party, I dare you!

Awkward Questions

2008-07-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Children ask the most awkward questions, don't they. I was watching the news at lunchtime with my little grand-nephew – they were reporting on Radovan Karadzic's welcome arrest. He asked me, “Why is that man disguised as Santa Claus?” An excellent question, I thought. I assume it is because he intends to defend himself and, as he will be incarcerated and will not have the opportunity to purchase a barrister's wig and presumably intends to weave one out of beard hair.

The little chap then asked me why old men wear their trousers higher than younger men, which was a bit close to home. Not to mention the armpits. It is true though...I have an uncle who has to breathe through his flies.

Then he asked me why people tie tin cans to newlywed's cars? I explained that this was because it causes a fuss when they tie them to hearses.

Grown ups ask much more sensible ones. To illustrate the point, a friend of mine asked me the other day why women don't faint as much as they used too. That one was easy. I said it was because it isn't as big as it used to be!

Too much of a good thing?

2008-07-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

In the Telegraph on Sunday there was a piece headlined “Heroin, crack and Prada shoes”. I was surprised. I had thought that the Tory Party conference wasn't due to start until October! Reading on I discovered that I had been mistaken. It was instead a heart-rending exploration of the problems experienced by rich drug addicts. These tortured souls are much worse off than than their counterparts on the country's inner city estates, the article explained. Apparently this is because the poor either run out of money or get put in prison before they die. The rich are doomed to snort, smoke and inject themselves into oblivion without once benefiting from the advantages of a spell sleeping in somebody's doorway to get them back on the straight and narrow. How gratifying to see the liberal media for once acknowledging the problems of being rich!

Data

2008-07-19T05:53:00.000-07:00

I see that the Ministry of Defence has had to admit to losing hundreds of computer disks, memory sticks and suchlike, the latest in a long line of data to be lost by the government. This is no bad thing. In my days at the Ministry it used to be only senior Civil Servants and Ministers who could read reports on the state of the nation's defences, intelligence reports on M.P.s and so forth, normally when we wanted to have a good laugh. Now, everyone who travels by train can help themselves! I recommend the 11.23 to Edinburgh, as this is where most government ministers live these days. Just last week I was able to peruse the Treasury's latest economic forecasts, written almost entirely in red ink, as well as a memory card on which I found Gordon Brown's plans for turning around his government's fortunes. Amazing how small they can make these devices, isn't it?

Max Mosely - Not a Nazi

2008-07-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

My old friend Max Moseley has been continuing in his noble quest to prove that he is not a Nazi but rather just a pervert. One can only but wish him well. It really was most unfair of the News of the World to brand him a Nazi just because of one little sado-masochistic orgy with 5 leather-clad, German-speaking dominatrices. Frankly, one suspects that the newspaper branded Max a Nazi just because his parents were, well, Nazis. Luckily Max is as brave as Sir Oswald and Lady Diana in speaking up for what he believes in and, thanks to him, I predict that Britain will soon, once again, be a country in which a man of modest means will be free to have his head inspected for lice before being soundly caned by five prostitutes with the assurance that none of them will video the act and sell it to the papers.

On an unrelated topic, I have a another suggestion in my ongoing series of creative methods of coping with the credit crunch - learn German. It is a romantic language and, if you are female, preferably tall, blond and possessing child-bearing hips and a strong stomach, then there is good money to be made doing favours for respectable gentlemen. You even get to keep the leather jacket and cane!

On another unrelated topic, isn't it about time that small mustaches made a comeback?

It's a girl!

2008-07-06T04:55:00.000-07:00

Another great achievement for the human race – A man, who is American, has given birth to a baby. I was rather disappointed to learn that the man was in fact a semi-transexual woman who has had what appears to be half a sex-change (the top half, for those of you who need me to draw a diagram). He/She has already appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and will now be writing a book. I am glad to see that even a sex change can not stop a mother from from caring above all about her money.., I mean child's welfare. Anyway, congratulations to you, sir and/or madam, on the birth of your new daughter (at least for now).

My successors as Members of Parliament, meanwhile, have been letting the side down again by voting to keep their apparently unlimited expenses on top of their salaries. I just can't understand why they feel the need. In my day if you wanted a nice house you just used your position to get yourself a few consultancies with ICI or BP – they'd give you all the money you want and all you'd have to do was look out for their interests in the House. These new politicians, on the other hand, seem to want to spend all their time hanging around television studios or, even worse, representing their constituents! Sometimes I wonder where it all went wrong.

Medical Matters

2008-06-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

I have had a serious health scare recently. I was rushed to my nearest NHS hospital where I was actually pronounced dead! Luckily, I was transferred to a private hospital where my condition was upgraded to alive. They also had a very high standard of nursing care – I had all the girls charmed with my ready wit, of course. “Matron, is my leg up in plaster or am I just pleased to see you?”

I shouldn't grumble about the NHS, though. I remember when I was in the colonial service in Botswana and had to rely for medical care on a small facility run by a group of Belgian nuns. No flirting to be had there, it goes without saying. In fact I must say that I retain great respect for those women who, unlike so many in the fickle age in which we live, had taken a solemn vow of chastity and had kept that vow, just like their mothers and their mothers before them.

Energy Saving

2008-06-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

Many people have asked for my advice on dealing with the current energy crisis. Well, here are my tips.

Drive downhill more often.
Reduce your winter fuel bills by spending the months between October and March in the Caribbean. I recommend Antigua. This winter you'll have the bonus opportunity to see England's touring cricket team!
Be managing director of B.P, Exxon or Shell. Even being president of Total would be alright if you can put up with the constant badgering from the human rights mob about your links to Burma.
Get one of those energy saving lightbulbs. Or some candles. And if you are cold have a cup of coffee and wear a pullover.
If you are female, marry an oil sheik or a Soccer player (my thanks to my old friend Silvio 'Il Duce' Berlusconi for that one)
Save electricity by using shorter, thinner wires.

That should sort out most of your problems. Don't worry – I don't charge for my advice!

The Appliance of Science

2008-06-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

Some readers have contacted me to express surprise at my comparison between George Bush and a six year old girl who has had half her brain removed. I accept that I was probably being unfair to the little girl. However, it is true that a Bush is actually used by scientists as a standard unit of intelligence, although it is only really of use when describing the intelligence of infant children, lower primates, dogs, etc. A six year old child is roughly equivalent to 4 Bushes – although I was once introduced to a precocious little chap who had been rated at almost seven Bushes while aged just six and a half!

In fact, George is not the only person in public life who has leant his name to a scientific measurement. A Prescott is a negative measure of intelligibility. Amongst psychologists, the Clinton is now the accepted measure of shamelessness (the average adult human rates at around one twenty-fifth of a Clinton) while the Blair is used as the standard unit of sanctimoniousness, phoniness, cheesiness and hypocrisy.

It isn't just politicians who have leant their names to standard units, either. The Jackson is the accepted measurement of creepy inappropriateness while the Spears is used to denote degrees of extreme desperation.

Medical Matters

2008-06-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

I read two very interesting medical stories today. One was about a little girl in America who has had half of her brain removed. She is now only twice as clever a George Bush. Luckily, doctors think that the remaining half will learn to take over all of the functions of the half they have removed so she will soon be back to the level of any other six year old child (that is to say approximately four George Bushes).

Then I read that over one quarter of adults in New York are infected with genital Herpes! This reminded me of the time when I had to visit my doctor on Harley Street with an embarrassing condition of my own – when he asked me what was wrong I said, 'My Love is like a red, red...well see for yourself, Doctor.'

I'm afraid I rather let myself down when he came to examine me. I was unable to help myself when the doctor approached me with a pair of rubber gloves and a tub of Vaseline and I cried out, 'Doctor, No!' Interestingly, Ian Fleming, who was being treated in the next cubicle used this as inspiration for his James Bond novel, Goldfinger.

Ever since that time I have done my best to patronize those brave and steadfast organizations which try to ease the stigma attached to the many conditions which remain taboo in polite society. Just last week, for instance, I opened a treatment centre for men who suffer from premature ejaculation. Actually, when I arrived there was nobody there as I had got my times wrong. The man at reception told me I had come too soon! Still, I find such occasions extremely rewarding - the most rewarding part was when they gave me my fee!

Big Fatsos

2008-06-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

I am told that McDonald's, the American burger company some of you might have heard of, have announced excellent trading figures, proving that no matter how how bad the global economic position there are still enough fatsos in the world to support our favourite supplier of meat flavoured sandwiches. Surprisingly, they say this growth has been led by strong sales over here in the UK and in France. I can understand the latter. I mean, there are only so many centuries for which one can base one's national cuisine on horsemeat and various slippery invertebrates before even a McDonald's burger seems appetizing, but we British have plenty of deep-fried, cholesterol rich foodstuffs of our own without having to import inferior foreign versions.

To prove the point, I was reading in the Telegraph today about an 18 month old baby who weighs more than 2 stone because her mother feeds her entirely on good old British chips – for our American friends that means french fries. And good for her, I say. When I was a child I would have done anything for a change from my ration of snoek and spam. The mother claims not to be concerned that her baby weighs as much as a 4 year old. The child will, after all, be able to make a living by appearing on those 'documentaries' about the fattest person in the world and will therefore be able to get her diabetes, heart disease etc. treated privately rather than having to rely on the National Health Service. And if she were to contract one of those flesh eating viruses that our hospitals hand out as free gifts to their patients, the bug would have so much flesh to eat that it would become exhausted, thus solving another problem.

So farewell Hillary.....

2008-06-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

Well, Hillary has finally, just about, bowed to the inevitable and suspended her campaign for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. That is, I believe, one of those irregular verbs at which politicians excel; I suspend my campaign, you run up the white flag, he (or she) humiliatingly bows to the inevitable.

It is a shame, really. She is a fine looking woman and her election would have been seminal moment in the history of the oval office – one to add to the many provided by her husband in that very room.

My niece, Tabby, worked at the white house for a while as an intern after she left university, where she met the great man. I asked her what he was like. “Cocky,” she replied, which was hardly news. She did tell me, however, that he enjoyed a good gossip. Apparently he had the worst tongue in Washington!

Oil Supply

2008-06-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

I have received quite a lot of messages from people who are worried about the recent oil spill off Argentina. Well, I am happy to say that you don't need to worry. There is still plenty more oil where that came from!

Also in the Americas, Hillary is refusing to concede the election for Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States. One must admire her tenacity. But then it is not in the nature of a Clinton to withdraw, is it?

Meanwhile, back here in Britain, there has been some research that shows that we've become so bad at maths that it now costs the country £9 billion per year! This is shocking. When I left school in 1947 one couldn't matriculate without passing a proper exam in arithmetic. My goodness, can that really be forty nine years ago?

The Chap's not for Turning!

2008-06-03T13:59:00.000-07:00

I was chatting a bit earlier with a friend of mine who is on the board at Bradford and Bingley – one of Britain's biggest mortgage lenders. He explained that the banks' current problems have nothing to do with irresponsible lending practices or high risk investment strategies. Reassured, I asked him for some free advice with what to do with a small amount of capital which I have happily found myself with thanks to a fortunate investment of my own – He considered this for a while and then recommend putting half of it on Sunny Jim in the 3.15 at Lingfield and put the rest on whatever dog is starting from trap 3 – trap 3 always wins!

Gordon Brown and his Home Secretary Jackie Smith, meanwhile, have been trying to convince their MPs to support their proposal to lock up people suspected of terrorism for 42 days without trial, 42 being the number you get when you multiply the number of pets Jackie had as a girl by the number of years Tony made Gordon wait to become Prime Minister minus the number you first thought of.

You have to admire Gordon's persistence in pushing through a measure that nobody wants and which will serve no discernible purpose. We shouldn't be surprised. Gordon doesn't know the meaning of the words “back down”. He also doesn't know the meaning of the words “electoral”, “liability” and “resign”. At least that places him several stages ahead of Gearge W. Bush, who doesn't know the meaning of the words “boat”, “cat” and “hatpin”.

Lady Collar's Handy Hints

2008-06-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. It is Lady Collar here. Bing has asked me to add a little colour to his blog by offering some advice on my own areas of expertice - and a jolly good thing too if you ask me. The finest of men, of course, (I did marry him, after all!) but he does rather have his head in the clouds and we all know that you sometimes need to speak to people on their own level, about things that they will recognize from their everyday, humdrum, insignificant little lives. We can't all be enormously successful politicians, journalists and businessmen, I always tell him. Every great man has someone standing behind him doing all of the real work - like Tony Blair had his Cherie and Hitler had his Eva Braun.

I thought I would start with a few tips from the kitchen. Now when I was a girl, cooking was easy. Irish cuisine involved taking something normal like bread and making it artery-cloggingly unhealthy by frying it. Scottish cuisine involved taking something that is already unhealthy, like a chocolate bar, and making it even more unhealthy by deep-frying it. English cuisine involved taking anything and boiling it until it becomes a tasteless mush – remember, as my husband would say, if you can count the carrots then they're not done yet. Traditional Welsh cuisine has always been mystery to us all.

Times have changed, of course, and now it is common to find many different dishes from around the world – all either fried, deep-fried or boiled to oblivion as above. Occasionally this works in reverse and you will take something traditional like blood pudding or battered tripe, and make it exotic by plastering it with curry sauce. That is what I recommend! Either that or order pizza!

The perils of Space Travel

2008-05-30T10:52:00.000-07:00

There is trouble in outer space of all places. The toilet on the International Space Station is broken. Now call me old fashioned but I thought that space travel was supposed to involve shiny rockets shooting rays at each other not hanging about in a metal tube crapping in a plastic bag and blowing it out the airlock. I think I would, if you will excuse the indelicacy, hold it in until I got home.

Which takes me back to the days when the main problem we had with toilets was finding some paper – when rationing finally ended after the war I was so desperate I nearly shot myself! (it was around the same time that I discovered that I wasn't a very good speller.) Soon the country was flooded with handily packaged rolls of paper towels imported into the country, as it happens, by my father's company. What a relief! No more popping next door to ask the neighbours if they had two fives for a ten!

Trophy Wives

2008-05-26T11:47:00.001-07:00

It seems that my old friends in the City have been raking in another years worth of enormous bonuses – and very welcome it is too. The poor chaps need cheering up, what with them wrecking the British economy and all that. And if that wasn't bad enough I read that the county's divorce lawyers has been inundated with trophy wives hoping to get a good divorce settlement before the economy goes completely belly up and all the poor chaps in the City get the sack. The good news is that the weak pound will make it cheaper to import a new wife from the far east. Or if you don't fancy that, I understand that you can get a good one from Russia for a song – and the song only needs to be good enough to win Eurovision.

If only Tony Blair had obtained a wife who would quietly spend his money instead of writing books. I have been reading Cherie Blair's memoirs in which she reveals that she and Tony conceived their youngest son at Balmoral whilst visiting the Queen. She says she was too embarrassed to take her 'contraceptive equipment' under the same roof as Her Majesty. One wonders quite what she means by 'contraceptive equipment.' The mind boggles. You'd have thought that the thought of some grubby journalist finding out about it and printing all of the sordid details in whichever rag of a newspaper was prepared to commit such a callous invasion of privacy upon the Prime Minister's wife and child would have put a dampener on the mood. Hang on a minute while I read that last sentence back.....irony is a wonderful thing, isn't it.

Gordon Again

2008-05-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

The people who pass for Senior members of the Government these days have been out in force trying to make Gordon Brown look like less of a loser.

I heard one of those identikit Labour party politicians that they have these days; he is a chap called Alan Johnson and he is the Secretary of State for Health. You may remember that he was one of those ones who tried to get elected as deputy leader last year and then got into lots of trouble spending donated money that hadn't been properly registered and which they had to give back because they'd passed a dopey law to make unregistered donations illegal. Of course they didn't realise they were all breaking the law even though it was them who campaigned for it, drafted it, steered it through parliament and lectured everybody else about how great they were for passing it. Frankly what surprised me was that so many people wanted to move into Prescott's office – especially knowing what he got up to in there. Anyway, Mr. Johnson said that the job of Prime Minister is now more difficult than it has ever been, which was why he was making such a dog's breakfast of it. I'm not sure if he has heard of, say, the second world war.

He did, however, demonstrate why Gordon is safe. With people like Johnson as potential successors there is no chance of a challenge.

Big Brother

2008-05-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

Over a rather fine lunch at the club, I spoke today to an interesting chap whose company provides IT services to the government. George is no boffin, of course; his expertise is in convincing Civil Servants and Ministers to sign on the dotted line. Luckily for him knowing what he is talking about is unnecessary for the simple reason that none of them know what they are talking about either. And they have a touching naiveté when it comes to the power of technology to solve their problems – just say the word Database and they are all over you like flies offered a particularly succulent turd. Quite right too. Next time you meet someone from IT ask yourself if you would want him running the country!

I asked George about the rumour that appeared in the papers this week that the government is planning to keep a record of every e-mail and text message sent in the UK. This would be an outrageous assault on civil liberties. I don't fancy my messages to that nice young lady Max Moseley introduced me to the other month being pored over by some official snoop. Not that those messages aren't perfectly innocent, of course. It is just that some things can be misconstrued – especially e-mails sent to bigbetty@aol.dl.net George wasn't worried. He says that it might be possible to build such a contraption but as the whole process would be overseen by people like him it would take so long to make it work that by then e-mails and text would long since have become obsolete. I asked him what he thought would have replaced them. He didn't have a clue, naturally!

As evidence for his confidence in how long it would take to make this proposed database work, George cited the Identity Card scheme, which is supposed to have something called biometrics to make them unforgeable. George thinks that this will prove so difficult to administer that the government will inevitably have to choose between the fancy technology and actually getting the cards issued before we all die of old age and they will end up having to issue something made of cardboard with your name written on it. Just like during the War.

There is not, however, any truth in the rumour that following an incident when an Undersecretary at the Home Office misheard a conference call, they spent eighteen months and 14 million pounds trying to develop a rectal scanner to confirm the identities of their employees. The story I heard was that they had engaged the services of Julian Clary as a consultant.

Russian Policing

2008-05-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting letter to the telegraph today in which the correspondent mused about the fact that Manchester United and Chelsea were able to play the European Cup Final in Moscow without a single supporter being arrested – the assumption being that this was because they were frightened of the Russian police and that more robust policing should be adopted here. It is an interesting argument, is it not? What this country really needs is more riot police with licence to thump anyone who looks at them cock-eyed.

It seems unlikely to happen, however. In fact the police have been criticised for their new tough approach to knife crime. It seems that this risks “alienating” the country's youth. Nothing upsets a child more than taking their knives off them.

On the political front Gordon Brown, having failed to take my generously offered advice, has stumbled from crisis to calamity. It seems that the Labour party's MPs are in a panic, believing that Gordon is the problem. The trouble is that this time last year the same MPs were certain the Tony was the problem. However, they seem pretty convinced and there are even suggestions of staging an “illness” as a pretext for Gordon getting the chop. Then they could impose another unelected Prime Minister on us all. How long do you think it will be until they are the problem? I think I shall open a book.

That reminds me. My PA Jemima has been helping out the Chairman of the local Conservative Party – an old friend of mine. She's had a taste of some of the stresses of political life – there was a late vote in the House during the week. She says that she and the Chairman were kept busy and that his Member was up all night!

Good Luck Gordon!

2008-05-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

Gordon Brown's has been responding bravely to his recent problems, I see. He has realised that increasing taxes on the poor to pay for a tax cut for the rich might be sending out the wrong signals to his working class voters who might actually vote for someone else instead of whoever Gordon chooses to be their representative – i read that there is a by-election this week somewhere called Crewe where the former incumbent's daughter is hoping to inherit the seat in a welcome return for the much maligned hereditary principle. Gordon has attempted to kiss and make up with the electorate by giving everyone a tax cut to give them back what he had just taken off them. Wisely, he is offering this to the rich, who will now pay even less tax, as well as to the poor who will now pay the same as they were before. Except for the really poor who will still be paying more. The best bit about it is that it is all paid for by reckless borrowing, thereby giving a much needed boost to the irresponsible lending business at a time when the industry most needs it. Gordon, you are a genius.

His flunkies have, meanwhile, been missing the point by telling him that it is all about image and that what he really needs to do is smile more. Take it from me, Gordo, this is not good advice. People liked you when you were a mean-faced bastard. It was only when you cracked the dirt on the back of your neck by smiling creepily that everyone went off you. People want their leaders to be bastards – people look up to those. Like they did to Thatcher. And Stalin.

They will tell you, of course, that Tony grinned like an idiot for a decade and that it never did him any harm. What you must understand is that the people can sense a phoney. Tony could get away with acting like a cross between an insincere snake oil salesman and an embarrassing trendy vicar because that was what he was! Everyone understood it! You are not.

2008-05-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

It seems that academics have added to the sum of human knowledge by discovering that young people get drunk because they hope to have more sex. It is good to see that the academic world is as sharp as ever. And that whoever it is who is in charge of research grants (their identity is one of the great mysteries of the modern world) is maintaining the standards for which they have established such a well earned reputation!

It wasn't like that in my day, of course. We didn't need booze as we had the war to provide us with unlimited opportunities for casual sex. Yes, throughout the war love was in the air! Except in single seater fighters, obviously. I remember on many occasion sidling up to some pretty little thing and whisper something like “Would you like to see my dishonourable discharge?” or, "Is this a V2 missile in my pocket or am I just pleased to see you?" and Bob's your uncle!

Weight

2008-05-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Scientists have, apparently, discovered a gene which causes fatness and they believe that an obesity cure could be available in a mere decade. Too late for poor old John Prescott, of course, but never mind. At least we now know that it wasn't the pies and Chinese meals but rather his genetic inheritance. This will no doubt come as a great comfort in his later years.

The real answer is, of course, exercise. We didn't get fat in the old days because we spent plenty of time doing healthy exercise, like hunting and shooting grouse. I suppose the poor didn't have that option but then they didn't have any food, so they didn't have to worry about it. Giving the poor access to cheap food was where it all went wrong, as there wasn't enough room on the country's estates for all those people to exercise on. There are other options, of course. I was a swimming champion when I was younger – i was a breaststroker - a hobby i have followed keenly ever since. And as I always said, once a breaststroker always a breaststroker.

Boris for President!

2008-05-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

I read a story in the press about a man called Troy Buswell who, unsurprisingly, is an Australian politician has got into trouble for sniffing a seat that a female employee had been sitting on. What a fool. As my old friend Max Moseley could have told him. There are women who will do that sort of thing for you for a reasonable price and only some of them will sell their stories to the papers.

I am glad to say, however, that he is sticking to his guns and refusing to stand down. Just right. He can learn from our own newly elected Mayor of London, the upstanding Boris Johnson. Proof if it were needed that being the victim of press intrusion into ones marital indiscretions should not spell the end of ones career. Of course BoJo (we can't use his initials as a nickname, obviously!) wasn't up to anything weird like Max or the Australian, although those of you who have seen a photograph of his mistress Petronella Wyatt may disagree! But it has restored my faith in Britain. Only in this great country could an oaf with no discernible talent and burdened by a private education rise to such high office. If only somebody would give the young chap a bloody good haircut, although a bloody awful one would be an improvement.

The Army

2008-04-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

There has been some discussion lately about how the army is no longer held in the same esteem by the public. This is mostly because there are no famous soldiers any more. By way of illustration, I have a nephew who called his eldest son Gadaffi as he was the only British trained soldier the poor chap had heard of. This is what comes of allowing the lower orders to take positions of command. It started to go wrong when Lord Kitchener and Field Marshall Haig got the blame for World War 1. By the time the second war came about we had to put up with that little oik Montgomery just because he won occasionally and didn't get all of his men killed in the process.

My own family, of course, has a proud naval tradition. One of my ancestors was a contemporary of Captain Bligh who sailed the South Pacific until his crew mutinied in protest at his constant renditions of “There is Nothing Like a Dame.”

On another note I have had to stop shopping at my local village store since they bought their new till which uses a barcode scanner. It just isn't suitable for the countryside. Yesterday Jemima was in to buy a large cucumber and was overcharged when they accidentally scanned a passing badger!

Not Cricket!

2008-04-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

I read with dismay that the new Indian Premier League has been a great success. This involves a new version of cricket which was invented in England a few years ago and which only lasts of a couple of hours, like football or rugby or something like that and which has now taken over the cricketing world being played by teams called the Kolkatta Knight Riders. Don't these people know that cricket isn't supposed to be about entertainment? It is supposed to be the supreme test of sporting endurance – for the spectator. Frankly people who want a match that takes less than a working week to conclude are nothing short of soft.

And the old standards of gentlemanly conduct have long been in decline. Long gone are the days when the new batsman would be applauded to the wicket by the opposing team. I well remember attending my first Test Match as a boy. England were being led by Walter Hiscock.

As he came out to bat, the captain of the visiting Australians, Roger Pink, gave Hiscock a cheery wave from mid-off, setting the tone for the match. Later, when Hiscock got his fifty, the bowler Alf Long took Hiscock by the hand and gave his customary firm shake.

When the England skipper got out next ball (I can still hear the radio commentary as if it were yesterday “Hiscock is out!) there was no gloating from the Australians who cheerfully applauded their adversary from the field. Oh for the days of Hiscock, Long and Pink!

Language

2008-04-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

I was talking today with an old friend, Henry Corweigh, who is an emeritus professor (retired) of English at Merton College Oxford. I told him about my recent observations of the corruption of our great language. Henry surprisingly disagreed. He is of the opinion that the English language has always been absorbing words from other languages. He gave me some examples. Willow (pron will-o), which is the American word for willy, menage á trois, which is French for in your dreams mate and aide de campe, which is the word for Graham Norton's helper.

And more than that, Henry said, the English language is constantly evolving and words often develop new meanings. Politics, for instance, means a parrot with a nervous twitch while shampoo is the word for a fake turd.

At that point I called for matron.

Branding

2008-04-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

I met an old friend for lunch today who has been working in management consultancy. He told me his company has been considering changing its internal branding. I misheard and loudly poo-pooed the idea, believing that branding ones employees was over the top in this day and age, and doing it internally would pose considerable logistic difficulties that wouldn't be cost-effective. I had misunderstood – by branding he was meant letterheads and suchlike – it was merely one of those Americanisms

When I hear such Americanisms I always feel like a man who has had something he lent a friend returned in less than top nick – we gave them a perfectly nice language and they've given it back to us all mangled and battered and now we have to make use it as best we can because we can no longer afford a new one. Historically, of course, the rot started to set in when we stopped using Iambic Pentameter. And what on earth was wrong with manuscript?

Television

2008-04-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

I read with pleasure that the Chief Executive of Channel 4, who is called Andy Duncan, has awarded himself a small pay rise of 100%. Some people have already complained, of course – how typical of our time that someone who is doing his best to better himself can be so thoughtlessly attacked. It isn't his fault that so many people let themselves get robbed blind by Richard and Judy's phone scam, is it?

Of course I am old enough to remember a gentler time, before such things as television were commonplace. On long winter nights we used to huddle around the piano, wishing that one of us could play it. So when Logie Baird invented Television, with the help of his little companion Boo Boo, he found an eager audience. I remember when we used to gather around that old wooden box and peer at the fuzzy grey face inside. And then, television arrived. So we popped the lid back on granny's coffin and watched that instead. It was a paraffin television. It wasn't bad, bud the picture got cloudy whenever you turned the wick up.

And it has proved a great success. As Lord Reith so presciently forecast, “At least it will take people's minds off cooking and gardening.”

Merchant Bankers

2008-04-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Good news on the financial front. And well done Alisdair Darling for being courageous enough to agree to help the banks with massive amounts of taxpayer's money and not be put off the small matter of it being their own fault that they've lost all that money. I hear people say, “but what about the poor?” Well the banks want to help the poor too, you know. They've being trying to help them for years by lending them astronomical sums. How were the banks to know that the poor didn't have any money to pay it back?

And we must also consider the question of indirect benefits. If city bankers don't get their bonuses then they can't spend them – the knock on effects would be incalculable. The high class escort business would be devastated! They've cut the price of a bottle of Bollinger and it's already hideously easy to get a table at all of the most exclusive restaurants in the City!

On the subject of food, that Nigella Lawson makes a wonderful sticky tart! Lady Collar agrees, although she really prefers ice cream. She told me how much she enjoys licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan.

I do try to stay off the puddings, however – I have to watch my waistline! The subject has been the talk of the office recently as my PA, Jemima, says that her boyfriend has put on a little weight lately and now has a pronounced pot belly. Apparently he has some pretty weird theories to explain it but she isn't convinced. She says she just can't see where he's coming from.

PR

2008-04-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

I've been helping my old friend Max Moseley with his PR as he has been trying to recover from the recent very unfair criticism he has received from the press. He has given an interview to the Telegraph which I think will help a great deal. I told him to play up the family angle – they fell for it hook line and sinker, printing Max's accusation that the press had upset his family terribly by telling them about his kinky sex romps. Of course, in Max's words, if he hadn't done it then there would have been nothing for them to find out, but that's not the point. Max also raised the real scandal in all this – the fact that one of the prostitutes sold the tapes to the press – a shocking breach of trust, as Max pointed out in the interview. Who could imagine that a prostitute could possible do such a thing – for money!

Max did such a fine job that one can only contemplate with regret the fact that this upstanding man was denied the chance to follow his father into the world of politics just because of his family name - we are the poorer for it.

I've been offering advice to quite a few people in the public eye recently - Like the sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe who got into a bit of bother recently when he appeared to contradict government policy on Post Office closures. “No problem,” I told him, and I gave him a script which would get him off the hook. I was so proud of him as I heard him proclaim on the Radio that, “My comments did not accurately reflect my views.”

I'm thinking of branching out into America. That fine young chap Barak Obama doesn't need my help, though. He's already got the best slogan in politics, “Yes We Can”. I understand he borrowed it from Bob the Builder, although Bob's version was more specific about what it was that we can do, ie. Fix It. Maybe that's what the Senator is getting at – he's going for the Dubya school of electioneering. Or perhaps he is the new JFK!

We also heard the shocking news that John Prescott has suffered from Bulimia for 10 years. It is important that publications like this do not make jokes about this very serious subject. It is also unnecessary – you can all do your own!

Ventriloquists and Soldiers

2008-04-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was asked by the British Broadcasting Corporation to offer a few reminiscences about my days in showbusiness back in the Fifties for a radio show they are putting together. I told them about my days working with Peter Brough, the ventriloquist. He wasn't very good. When you saw him listening to his dummy, Archie Andrews, you could see his ears move.

I visited my local territorial army base yesterday in my role as honourary chairman of the local Armed Services Benevolent Society. One of the soldiers, who has done a tour of Iraq, explained to me why he had volunteered. “I just wanted to fight in the war so badly”

“You're in luck,” I replied, “A war hasn't been fought this badly since Field Marshall Haig launched his great offensive at Ypres with the aim of moving his drinks cabinet five feet closer to Berlin.”

Of course in my political days I was talked of as a possible Defence Secretary. They stopped me, I'm afraid, claiming there was a conflict of interest. Just because I made a small profit selling tear gas to Pinochet!

Hospitals

2008-04-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

I heard a sad story today about an IT programmer who passed away in hospital after his life support machine malfunctioned. His dying words were, “have you tried switching it off and switching it on again?”

It put me in mind of the time shortly after the last war when I assisted in giving emergency first aid to a rugger team mate who had dislocated his shoulder in a particularly vicious scrummage. We rushed him to the nearest doctor – by doctor I mean proper, Harley Street doctor, of course! - who instructed me to hold young Barry down while he wrestled the offending limb back into place, amidst much loud screaming from Barry, who was Welsh, after all.

A woman looked into the room – the Doctor introduced her as a midwife – who remarked that she had been attending a birth along the hall. She said that the woman had given birth to an eleven pound baby after being in labour for 12 hours and had got through it without half the fuss that Barry had made. “Ah Yes,” said the doctor, “But you want to try pushing it back in.”

Scandal!

2008-04-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

I read that somebody has been accused of attempting to blackmail a member of the Royal Family over allegations that he engaged in a homosexual act! I should think that there wasn't much left that one Royal or another hasn't done so I can't imagine why those chaps thought anyone would be willing to pay to keep this latest one quiet. And anyway when you think of the various megalomaniacs, psychotics and lunatics who have been numbered amongst the ranks of the world's royal houses a little bit of sexual misbehaviour hardly sounds that serious. It is only our time's particular fascination with things that happen south of the border which makes such stories newsworthy at all. It did, however, put me in mind of a time when I very nearly got caught up in just such a scandal, perfectly innocently of course!

I was enjoying a fine holiday in Thailand when I encountered a pretty little thing who's charms, I am ashamed to admit, I found myself unable to resist. Especially when she whispered seductively in my ear, “you want slippy slippy?”

Only she turned out to be the widow of Lord Boy, if you get my drift. Imagine my shock when I lifted up her frock and found myself looking at the last turkey in the shop! I made my excuses and left, a sadder but wider man.

Honourable Members

2008-04-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterdy I attended a Charity dinner. They cooked the vegetables the old fashioned British way – if you can count them they are not done yet. We were talking about our esteemed politicians in the House of Commons, a natural enough topic of conversation given my history as an Honourable Member. My successors have been rather letting the side down recently by getting caught with their hands in the till.

It really is quite unfair to blame Members of Parliament for this – in the old days we were able to quietly accumulate as much moolah as possible from their Directorships with ICI and BP, and by doing the odd favour for legitimate businessmen from, say Saudi Arabia, helping them get a perfectly above board arms deal. But then the country decided that they wanted ther MP's to spend all their time sitting in TV studios and even constituency offices so it is only natural that they will need to make up the lost income from the taxpayer. But people just won't accept that! Modern Britain just doesn't have the same respect for its elected officials. Of course the rot really set in with Neville Chamberlain who was never given the credit he deserved. He did so much, after all, to redevelop Britain's run down inner cities by failing to stop World War Two.

The beneficiary of the function, by the way, was an old Almshouse which needs restoration. Its motto was 'Bring me your Old, your Poor and your Impotent'. Well the old and the poor turned up, but the impotent couldn't come.

Airports

2008-04-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

The chaps at Heathrow have been having a few problems lately. I think the media's attitude has been most unfair. I only travel by private jet, of course but if one is not so fortunate as I (which will apply to almost all of you, of course!) then you simply must accept a few lost bags. It's not the end of the world, is it? It is certainly unfair to blame the my good friend Willie, who is only the Chief Executive of BA after all. He can't go and sort the bags himself, you know!

I was discussing the subject with my old friend Lionel today. Can you believe that he wasn't very sympathetic to BA at all! But then the poor old chap has been bit down on his luck lately, I am sorry to relate; it seems that he's having some 'liquidity problems' if you know what I mean. Well, the divorce has been expensive. The court took a dim view of his 'snooker lessons' from the British Women's Open champion. Apparently he spent all his time trying to pot the pink. I'm starting to worry if the stress is getting to him. I took him to lunch and he afterwards he asked if he could bum me for twenty pounds! I declined, as you can imagine. We all know where that sort of thing leads, don't we – welfare dependency!

Before I go, I have to apologise to one of my readers who misunderstood one of my recent posts when I told the story of the time my veterinarian recommended that my cat needed pills, which were to be taken as suppositories. I advised that I found that you could make a modest saving on vets bills by using a biro to push them up yourself. Mrs. Handcart, I apologise most profusely for the misunderstanding. I hope you are sitting more comfortably now and that the surgical cushion I sent you is helping. I must say, though, that your letter of complaint was very difficult to read!

corporal punishment

2008-04-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

It is sometimes suggested, normally by socialists, that corporal punishment is damaging. I beg to differ.

In my experience, Nanny would often administer sound thrashings and it never did me any harm, although it did make me late for high tea at the club this afternoon. There I met my good friend Max, who's having a few problems at the moment so, to take his mind off it, I offered to take him loster fishing at the weekend. Now, this may surprise you but when I go lobster fishing I always take my young personal assistant Jemima, although I would normally say that the open sea is no place for the fairer sex! But she has an excellent memory and always remembers where we left our lobster pots – it is where she tossed a large buoy over the side on the way out.

Jemima is a rather good cook as well, which is a blessed relief after Lady Collar's cooking, I should say! She does a rather fine lobster, as it happens. Some claim that killing them by dropping them into boiling water is cruel. Nonsense! The lobsters enjoy it and it is more humane than shooting them. I think for afters we shall sample some of Jemima's rather fine melons. Insist on the Afghan variety!

Formative Years

2008-04-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

People ask me from whence comes my trademark erudition. It was, of course, courtesy of a traditional British education founded squarely on the 3 Rs – Reading, Writing and Spelling. And of course in my day you couldn't matriculate without passing a strict test in Reading, which is a nice enough town, although why they made us go all way over there was never fully explained. After that I went up to Cambridge where I had a lovely weekend.

Then, still back in the seventies, I joined Her Majesty's Constabulary, which wasn't all fun and games. In fact it was nothing like those recruitment advertizements I remember from my childhood; the one with the funny little chap with the big nose, the crocodile and the string of sausages. There was an embarrassing occasion when we had one of our unmarked cars stolen. It took months to find it, what with the search being hampered because we couldn't issue a description. It was a Special Branch vehicle and we didn't want anyone to know what it looked like.

Not long afterwards, I arrested a woman shoplifter outside the local Italian restaurant who a whole salami hidden in her underwear. When I questioned her she explained that she was missing her Italian boyfriend. Which just goes to show that one shouldn't always expect the worst.

I left the police not long afterwards and started my political career, as I no longer recognized the country I was living in.